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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Helper or Hinderer?

[7 minute read ] 

A stitch in time saves nine

I just cannot work people, or life, out sometimes.

I lost my keys yesterday. Fortunately, I live in a village and there are not many people using the same lane as me; I know most of them anyway. Oh Dear! I keep forgetting that I need to make things clear. I mean, I am lucky that because there are only a few people walking dogs during the day, and most people using the lane know each other, we can just randomly ask anyone we come across if they have found any keys, and they are keen to do what they can to assist; by looking out for any keys that were lying on the road but are now on a low brick wall.

       'Have you come across any keys, recently?' I asked a young couple.

       'No. Where did you come from? Are you on a bike ride?’

       'No,'  I gave my home address and mentioned how far I had got towards cycling to the Co-op.’

       'We have come from near the church, We will keep an eye out.'

      'Thanks, I can't get in without the keys.’

In the shop:

       'Have any keys been handed in?’

        'No.' He looked on the floor, at where I had been standing earlier.

        'The trouble is', I said, 'if someone finds them, they might take them home and then write on a post card that they have found them, and get you to pin it up on your noticeboard. If they just left them where they fell out of my pocket, I would have found them by now. It is only about five minutes since I locked my front door. I can't go home, because I can't get in.

Outside the pub, a chap offered to put an appeal on FaceBook. I told him that since I have nothing to do with FaceBook, he is saying nothing different to me than,  'Let's ask the squirrels and badgers if they have picked them up.' Appealing on FaceBook is one idea, but I didn't have a phone with me and I couldn't get in my home to use the laptops, so I could never be able to access any replies. Bit of a dead-end really. On top of that, I don't have a FaceBook account. That means I would have to include my home address for the finder of the keys to deliver them to, and wait outside my front door to make sure the kind person didn’t push my keys through my letter-box. Let's face it, most people would think just leaving house keys outside the front door to which they fit, is not the best thing to do. He offered to buy me a beer. I declined; I had money, and drinking beer wouldn't find the keys.

In the pub:

       'Have any keys been handed in.' I asked the bartender.

He didn't answer; he just went to the back and fetched my keys. 'A woman just handed them in. They were over there. He pointed to the road junction I had come out of on my way to the Co-op. I didn’t hear them drop because a tractor was turning into the lane just as they fell out of my pocket. Well, that is what I thought.

       'She is the garden.’

       'How many people are in her party?'  I asked. 'Will this be enough? I showed him a tenner.

       'Well, it will get them a couple of drinks.’

Relieved to have my keys back and grateful that the day was getting back to normal, I set off to the Co-op again. But then I had a thought; I had past a group of four people and an infant on a balance bike that were heading in the direction of the pub. I recognised them and stopped for a few words and pretended to race the little boy on his bike. The older couple live just down the road from me; the younger pair and child I had never seen before. Perhaps, it is fortunate that I did slow to briefly chat because something in that conversation pricked at me. It started me thinking about the chain of events in the same way as in the film, Sliding Doors' with two alternative plot-lines. Gwyneth Paltrow plays a woman who misses an underground train in one plot, and gets on the underground train in the alternative plot. It is a film that relies heavily on, and portrays  'cause and effect'. You know,  'The Butterfly Effect', which is also the name of another film.

If you can accurately trace your movements, cause and effect can appear to be fantastic. Indeed, I am inclined to lean towards believing that there is an outside influence to much of what we do; an invisible influence that many would regard as supernatural.

There is something in me that means that if I have an idea and can find ways to justify it, I will have a strong need to act on it. I had left my house to buy a few packets of Dioralyte, the powder that helps to restore electrolyte levels in dehydrated people. Before I got my bike outside, I put my house keys in my back pocket. The pocket where the frequent positioning of keys had worn a hole. I remembered that there was a hole and out the keys in a different pocket. After getting my bike outside I discovered that I couldn’t lock the front door because there was another key still in the lock inside. After removing that key, I took the bunch of keys from my pocket and, through habit, put them in the back pocket with a hole in it.

A minute later, I came across my neighbours, in the lane.

       'The Met office said it will be 37 degrees on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.' I offered.

      'Oh, it will rain then,'  the older woman cynically called back. 'It is my birthday on Tuesday!' The distance grew between us.

I sometimes mistake cynicism for skepticism; skepticism that is aimed at the veracity of my comments. I mentally shrugged, and put her words to one side, Ahead, was the little boy on his balance bike and his dad trotting alongside him. Running is what had prompted me to mention the forthcoming weather. I pretended to race the little boy, before I cycled on.

After I had visited the local shop to see if they had Dioralyte, and headed towards the Co-op, I checked for my keys, I often do that at random times. They weren’t there. After about twenty minutes of cycling back and forth to my home and back twice. That is when I started asking anyone strolling about. Well, two times. I stopped at the pub to ask, got offered the beer, asked inside, and got my keys back.

Ten quid lighter, and keys in a safe pocket, I stopped cycling to the Co-op. I remembered who was in the lane and realised they must have been going to the pub. Back I went, and went straight into the pub garden. Sure enough, there they were seated at a bench. I showed them the keys.

       'Do you recognise these?' I asked the whole group, yet somehow directed it at the older woman. Now here is where the weird stuck its tongue out at me and made itself known. If we look hard enough, we will see it.

       'No,' she said, ‘Did you get them from behind the bar?'  Instantly, I knew she had handed them in. I thanked her and told the group that I had put ten pounds behind the bar for them. Nobody acknowledged it and no-one thanked me back. 'I didn't hear them drop', she added.

Unthinking, I replied, 'Neither did I. There was a tractor.’

Just as I was retreating and was about thirty or forty feet away, the older man loudly cried,

       'Martin, I keep thinking your name is Paul.' His name is Paul. I went back to their table and said,    'Martin, you seem to like the name Paul, and plainly because Martin is in my head as your name, we should swap, and you can be Paul and I will be Martin. Convoluted, I realise, but my disjointed spoken bullet-points with no explanation, is how I am most often misunderstood.

       'He can't remember anyone's name except the dog's,' his wife, the older woman, said.

I felt she was publicly humiliating him by maligning him, so I tried to rescue him.

       'This will cheer you up then'; meaning what I am about to say should make you think he is not so bad.

       'Oh here we go', she said, rolling her eyes. She looked around the table.

Her exasperated comment somehow stymied any further explanation of how my story is not indicative of my own attitude. I just wanted to finish the conversation and go, but I had to politely finish what I had started. 'A while ago, I said, 'I don't know if it is still true; a Greek man would mourn his donkey's death by wearing a black arm-band for a whole year, but would wear a black arm-band to mourn his wife for only a month.' Paul recognising my blunder, just said the first thing that came into his head. 'I like donkeys.' I noticed a wry smile on the incredulous young woman, in the group, looking up at me from her seat. I didn't look at her husband.

There was silence at the table as I left. I felt I knew who would be the first to speak. I will never know for sure, though.

I didn't explain that the observation I had handed to them was probably more indicative of Greek life decades ago in the countryside, and even more so, two or three thousand years ago. I really didn’t want to. I was smarting from the older woman's relentless jaded comments, and just how acerbic she could be. A thousand or more years ago, a man without a donkey would have had no prospects. He would certainly not find a wife with no hope of maintaining an income. His donkey, to his mind, would probably be considered to be the difference between life and death. He likely would acknowledge its hard work, work that had allowed him to present himself as a good prospect for marriage. Without ever having a donkey he could never have married his love. 'Oh, here we go!' to me, had meant, 'He is about to go off on a wild story that he thinks is relevant, but it really isn't! I had no compunction to elaborate on the story.

Here is the list of actions, in chronological order, that ultimately means that I presented as a raging misogynist and during the impending heatwave, infants and elderly people in my neighbourhood potentially have a greater chance of being hospitalised with severe dehydration and the attendant effects of dehydration.

I unlocked my front door with a spare key and left it in the lock on the inside.

I put a thermometer outside my house with a sign that warned passers-by that the Meteorological Office for the UK is forecasting 37 degrees Centigrade for three consecutive days. 

I made the decision to buy five packets of five or six 'Dioralyte' sachets, an over-the-counter product that helps to restore electrolyte levels in dehydrated people.

I took put the bunch of keys in the pocket with a hole in it, remembered the hole and put them in a different pocket.

I put my bike outside and tried to lock the door with the bunch of keys but discovered that there was still the spare key in the lock, inside, so I removed the key and hung it up.

Now my focus had been redirected and I forgot about the hole in my pocket so, after locking the door with the bunch of keys, habitually put them in the back pocket with the hole in it.

I cycled towards the Co-op intending to stop at the local shop on the way. By the time I got to the local shop, the keys were on the road.

My near neighbour picked the bunch of keys up and took them to the pub.

Kindness flowed from everyone I met.

I retrieved my keys.

There is something missing though. A particular spoken sentence that repeats in my head gives me reason to think that someone made a decision that corrupted a smooth path of empathy and the evolution of, perhaps, life-saving action.  'I didn't hear them drop.' (the bunch of keys) My floundering response of,  'Neither did I, there was a tractor ' came from my memory of being out of the group's sight, further along the lane.

Why would you hear them drop if I was out of your sight? Being within hearing distance of a bunch of keys falling onto a road from three or four feet means that you are also within seeing distance. Did she, the older woman, my near-neighbour, see the keys drop and her attitude towards me, or the world in general, was such that instead of calling me back, she decided to hand them into the pub, and I would, maybe, go there to retrieve them.

Desperation from not finding my keys increased the value, in my mind, of being in possession of them. If I had been called back, I would have just thanked the woman. After half an hour or so of considering my options to regain entry into my home, I felt a reward should be given. Relief that someone had not thrown them into a ditch, or pocketed them with bad intentions, impacted heavily on me; hence I put  £10 behind the bar for the finder's group; the same £10 that was earmarked for the Dioralyte.

Was my kindness thwarted by someone’s long-term jaded attitude? Granted, my near-neighbour had the goodwill to hand the bunch of keys in, and I am relieved that she didn’t return from the pub and put them through my letterbox. But, something went wrong.

In economics, the utility of the £10 that moved from me to her, in my view, is less than the utility it would have had if it had bought Dioralyte. Unless….I shouldn't buy Dioralyte. There is no Dioralyte in my village shops. This means I need to go to a chemist in the city. I can't help but feel it is all a bit spooky. I am not going to compound the weird issue by buying any Dioralyte. Somehow, the only way to stop me buying Dioralyte was to reduce my financial capability by £10.

Sometimes, I have had to stop to tie my shoelaces, or had to mend a puncture before I can continue. Perhaps the delay in my progress meant that I did not get hit by a road-raged driver in a car that day.

However, all that pondering is just being 'off with the fairies'. If I had spent twenty minuted sewing a patch on my back pocket, or not washed all my other pairs of shorts at the same time, which were still not dried, I would not have lost my keys.

A stitch in time, saves nine [stitches], £10, some anxiety, and  a whole load of misunderstanding.

'It is not you, it is me!'

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Choose gambling and parental oppression

[9 minute read ] 

Freedom

Economists find it difficult to accurately map how people go about their lives; whether they will or won't spend money or invest resources; by resources, I, of course, mean, time; money; support from relationships; and opportunities (anything that could be used by an individual in a fashion to either maintain or improve their existence).

Economists have methods to map out and understand human behaviour, yet they can never be confident that people will  just do as they are predicted to do. However, economists do know some things.

People get stuck on one way of looking at a problem and only accept information to support their view. All other information gets ignored.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/framing-effect.html

Recently, I came across a young person on the 'Student Room' web site, who professed to having a problem and was seeking advice. It seemed the problem that this student thought they had was a financial one, but only by looking at two avenues to finance their university studies. The student has some capital (an undisclosed amount) and has eyed a loan from Student Finance for England (SFE). The dilemma, from the student's point of view seems different to my, rather different, point of view.

This angst-ridden student felt that they were 'ghosted' because they did not get replies from potential employers when they applied for jobs. I can't help but think that this student fails to recognise that they are never going to be the only one to apply for a single position, without being exceptional in their field and  finding a role for which the potential employer has created such parameters on the position that the exceptional candidate is the only one that could possibly believe they may have any chance of success in their application for the position.

This student seems to be unable to consider any potential employer's available resources. Of course, all business people crave in-depth information on their competitors and their industry market; that is a given. I mean, when we apply for a job, many of us have an expectation that there is someone whose sole job is to read CVs and cover letters, and then personally respond to every applicant with detailed feedback on why they have not got the job. When it doesn't happen, some people may feel as though they have been dismissed, or purposely diminished, or indeed, 'ghosted'. And why not? Leaving school and entering the job world is a huge transition in thinking. There is, to my knowledge, no interim staging post; a place where school-leavers are disenfranchised of their belief that they will get coherent and encouraging responses from a leader (teacher) on a individual basis, after they leave school.

This all fits in with, People get stuck on one way of looking at a problem and only accept information to support their view. (above); but only loosely. It would seem that the problem the school-leaver faces is not being able to get a job, and not knowing why. But, I suggest that the true problem is something else. School children today have an expectation of 'to and fro' conversation that is made up of snippets of information passed over a long period of time, with each piece complimenting or negating all previous information. It is the nature of schooling that advice changes as the student grows both in personality and capability. All this comes to a sudden stop when they leave school and all that is left are their friends who perpetuate the dribble of information to which they are accustomed. So, many school-leavers only accept information of a particular style (slow over a long period with immediate gratification thrown in for good measure).

The second part of the definition I wrote in my scrapbook for 'Framing Bias' is: [they] only accept information to support their view. All other information gets ignored. 'That' needs no further explanation, I suggest.

Back to the dilemma the student on the 'Student Room' website has:

The parents are pressuring their child to use a Child Trust Fund to pay for British Citizenship; hopefully for the application of citizenship! This, in my mind, presents a whole web of problems, not least is that the almost-adult (still attending school) would potentially wipe out a capital that would, I suspect, be extremely difficult to replace without good work prospects; and we know that is no guarantee, even if they are able to shed off the reliance on teacher-pupil type transactions to which they are accustomed.

How does this child not have British citizenship? It seems obvious that the parents never applied for it on their behalf - perhaps immigrants cannot make a blanket application for their family, and so immigrant children have to make the application after they reach legal maturity. (Later, I noticed that there is a lower fee for children to make an application for British citizenship, so the parents could have made an application for the troubled student, but seemingly didn't. All sorts of questions can be mounted as to why this might be. But this is not about immigrants and their legal status, outside of the expressed problem at hand. (coercion, debt, capital, and education)

I can't remember what the criteria are for eligibility for a SFE loan. I think it wouldn't be a bad guess to believe that you need to live in England, and not in Scotland or Wales; you have to be legally responsible for the debt; and crucially, there must be some expectation that the loan will be paid back. This latter part probably means that you can be legally chased across the world by the British Government, and a garnishee order can be legally placed on earnings. In other words, without beating about the bush, you have to have British Citizenship. 'Ding' changes to 'Dunk' as the bell suddenly cracks.

Not to put too fine a point on it, applying for British Citizenship solely to reap a financial gain is an extremely sensitive area for a lot of people. SFE loans, by accruing interest and being only repayable when a pay threshold is reached, could mean acquiring many years of work experience before someone achieves a suitable financial income to make even very small repayments.

To re-iterate - This is not about immigrants. That is only a single channel of perceiving this issue; and for many people, it might be the first thing that comes to mind; quite simply because there is a tendency in many of us to follow the latter part of 'Framing Bias' in that many people tend to ignore evidence or information that doesn't fit with their initial evaluation.

The troubled student on the 'Student Room' website probably believes they have a problem with their demanding parents. A reply by another student, to the framed question, alluded to the expectation that SFE has for parents to continue to fund their offspring while they study at university; it went along the lines of eligibility for a maintenance loan. I have no idea how that works, because I am an Open University student with no accommodation to pay for, other than my own home.

Paraphrasing the troubled student: 'I can't get a job, so I would, if I don't give my parents the full SFE loan and they pay for my phone bill and give me some food money, only have £17 [per week or month]' (either way it is not a great amount). The dilemma is whether to give up a financial cushion in the form of capital; the 'Child Trust Fund' is spent on British Citizenship, or seemingly give up the ongoing parental support. Yeah, I know, the information given was not really clear, but what can you expect from a confused person with practically no experience of money matters, adult personal relationships, and in possession of only poor information?

It seems to be an opportunity cost problem.

Putting the confusion and 'bobbling' aside. There is a practical solution, I feel, to the student's dilemma. But we have to approach the problem in a different way. Why can't the student get a job?

Lack of appropriate experience in the industry

Personality and Character issues

Poor education

General lack of knowledge

-isms

But here is where it gets tricky.

The 'Prospect Theory' holds that individuals are more influenced by the possibility of a loss than the prospect of an equivalent gain. (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). I didn't reference this in my scrapbook, but it is likely I got it from 'Simply Psychology'. I have the book, but here is a web address:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/framing-effect.html (accessed 20 June 2026)

Again, I am coming from the angle of looking at lost opportunities. If the student spends their trust fund on British citizenship, which I think costs around £1,839 for naturalisation (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fees-for-citizenship-applications/fees-for-citizenship-applications-and-the-right-of-abode-from-6-april-2018) then that same money cannot be spent on education that would boost the student's desirability as a prospective employee and  thereby ease later undergraduate study in the same field. The gain from appropriate education is a rise in financially rewarding prospects in the short-term, and a further rise in financially rewarding prospects from gaining a better degree, through applying prior knowledge. This, however, is not guaranteed. It is gambling. Losing £1,839 for naturalisation is guaranteed; so what needs to be done to minimise the maximum loss? (minimax)

Applying for British Citizenship, and getting it, with the £1,839 for naturalisation, means that there is a clearly advantageous return; not least the prospect of being eligible for a government-funded loan for education. However, there is a problem that may not seem obvious, unless we are still looking at the problem from an opportunity cost angle. By going to university for three years and not working, valuable opportunities for gaining work experience are lost. Often, graduates cannot get the job they wanted, the one they hoped a degree would assist them into, and they find themselves competing for the same low-paid job as someone with three years work experience, who may not have attended university. 

While most of us, who can trace our British ancestry back to ten or twenty generations ago, would struggle with some of the British History and British Culture questions that are set for immigrants seeking British Citizenship, it really is a question of education. Everybody, including me, I strongly suspect, if I had to apply for British Citizenship, needs to learn about Britain to pass the tests; so inevitably, time, as a resource, is spent in one area, and the same time cannot be spent studying something different or elsewhere. No worries! At least failed job applicants can be assured of benefits if they have British Citizenship. It seems then, that the safe bet, using a Child Trust Fund to pay for naturalisation, really is, just taking the obvious route of positioning oneself above a safety net; a safety net that catches, yet does not propel.

Even with a vast handful of qualifications, someone may still not be able to get a job. I had my CV assessed a few years back by a professional trainer and recruiter (Reed Recruitment). I had already discovered 'Applicant Tracking Software' is used to 'read' CVs, and I had become aware of the U.S.A Department of Homeland Security's 'Automated Targeting System' which is designed to assess suitability for ingress into the United States of America; so I arrived at my appointment with my CV, fairly confident that it was perfect; after all, there were no lines separating either paragraphs or areas of interest.

       'We need to remove all the full-stops.' I was told by the Reed trainer.

My two-page CV, less than three pages, but still more than one, is not long enough to list all my qualifications and have enough room to explain the job roles and responsibilities I have had. Even if everything is fine, employers may look at my social media interaction, and make a decision based solely on my projected personality. This, is after getting past the automated CV checks that resulted in a suggestion that a real person actually reads my CV. Whether all of a two page CV gets read is anyone's guess.

My advice to the distressed student in the 'Student Room' website was 'not to apply for British Citizenship with the sole intention of becoming eligible for accruing a significant and crippling SFE debt that is only repayable once a pay threshold is reached'. Using capital to accrue debt for education just makes no sense to me. The same amount of money, £1,839, if spent on a course through 'Reed Courses' or a whole bunch of other places, should result in a valid and recognised qualification, that should significantly boost a job applicant's desirability, especially at a young age. 

'AAT Level 3 Diploma in Accounting with Work Experience' £510, not including a £96 exam booking fee, or registration fee with AAT, offered by KBM Training. A six month course.

'Microsoft Office Skills (Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint) Administration & Office Skills' 33.5 hrs self-paced, £15 (no recognised qualification, but still a good addition to an empty CV)

With gainful employment at age 19, the pressure that parents might bear on the decisions a young adult may be faced with, certainly with the example I have exposed, are hugely dissipated.

I may not have made it clear, but the parents of the confused and distressed student on the 'Student Room' website, seem to be attempting to alleviate, or offset, some of the cost of the accommodation the student would need, in order to study away from home, by having the whole SFE loan handed to them (the parents), and then determining how much to give to the student. Who really wants that  kind of oppression from their parents? (I have also read the woes of an autistic student who is not trusted to function well by herself, in the 'Student Room'). Can we really expect that someone with a degree but no valid practice on managing one's own resources would do well in the harsh world of work-hardened adults? I suggest, these parents may be inadvertently smothering the future welfare of their own genes. This flies in the face of 'altruism' which many people believe exists, only towards members of the same family.

As long as the student has a right to work in the UK, I suggest finding work and sticking to it, should be the first priority, and any capital should be spent on action that has the best chance of rapidly replacing the same capital; the reason for this is quite simply, not to allow education be a bar to opportunities. Well, perhaps, not let the pursuit of further or higher education be a bar to opportunity.

Alternatively, spending £1,839 on the hope of British naturalisation would practically guarantee a £4088 SFE loan for a single Open University module. I suppose Essex University online modules cost a similar amount; or £7,335 for two modules per year, to complete a degree in three years.

What we may not be considering is that by gaining qualifications online, there is no need to apply for a maintenance loan if the student stays at home with their parents. Importantly, the total loan is lower, and the accrued interest is less impactful.

The student on the 'Student Room' website seems to see their problem as only being solved by attending a brick University, and an attendant (though distracting) lack of money, which gambling on an imagined future by getting a degree will supposedly eradicate. The real problem is actually, 'How do I get a job?' tomorrow, instead of in three years time. In economics, this is similar to being offered £1 today or waiting for £10 in a years time. It is 'Discounted Utility'. It is calculated as the present discounted value of future utility. However, if the student is stuck in thinking the 'utility' of £1 today is ten times less than £10 in a years time, they are only considering money in a bank and not opportunity. Admittedly, a single pound doesn't give much scope for opportunity, but if it is scaled up, the possibilities are endless. 'How do I get a job in three years time?' is likely to be the wrong direction to take. It certainly requires a quite linear form of convergent thinking, in that one has to believe there is a valuable future available to oneself and everything understood today will be the same in the future. 

       'I have a good job. I will get a mortgage and repay it over twenty-five years, and in twenty-five years I will be free of debt.' Ha ha!

An aside:

I was once denied a £1,000 bank loan, even though I was self-employed with a lot of money going through my bank account (about £190,000 per year), because I transferred £5 per month to a William Hill betting account. I explained that the William Hill account was used for a weekly £1 stake in the Irish Lottery, which has better odds than the English Lottery; (13 million to 1 chance of winning the English Lottery at the time, and 11 million to 1 chance of winning the Irish Lottery. My bank balance was over £14,000 at the time of the loan request. The loan was for work equipment.

       'You're a gambler!' I was told.

       'So are you!' I replied.

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Blowing ponds uphill

[4 minute read ] 

Complex and Complicated

'A well-constructed Indian man, in India, when asked, 'Which English accent sounds funny or weird?' answered, 'Oh, I think those who speak Russian or French!''

Like many people, I write stuff in scrapbooks and little pads of paper, the latter of which live in my coat pockets. The particular words, in the phrases above, are not familiar to me; they are not how I would write that joke, if it is a joke, so I must have come across it somewhere and I thought it should be recorded. Hence, it is not my own creation. It is not funny to me; it is more interesting to me that the Indian man had a completely different slant on the question to, I suspect, the questioner. I suppose the questioner had different UK regional accents in mind. That, however, is how only British natives and people who do not have English as a national language would take the question. You know, Europeans, for example, who happen to be hear British people a lot. English, however, is one of the national languages of India.

English speakers in the U.S.A., Canada, and Australia may understand that the questioner means which 'British' accent is funny or weird, even if the questioner actually meant to exclude Scotland, and Wales from the implied choice.

Complex, isn't it? Or, is it complicated?

From: The British Language School, 'Understanding Complicated and Complex'. https://thebritishlanguageschool.com/complicated-or-complex/

'Complicated problems consist of many interrelated parts, which experts can resolve through analysis and expertise. They are often linear, meaning that causality can be traced. In contrast, complex problems involve unpredictable variables and interactions, requiring adaptive thinking. Complex situations include factors that can change over time, adding to their unpredictability.'

From the same scrapbook: 'Those in education are programmed to pick up more information - They don't close their eyes'. Now, that does sound like I wrote that, because it is pregnant with opportunities to expand on an idea. 

I think I heard Tim Vine, the one-liner, British comedian say, 'I remember the first time I saw a universal remote control. I thought, well, this changes everything.' (It might have been Milton Jones who said that).

I think, you have to be able to let your mind spin a bit, and allow nonsense to prevail for a moment, to get that joke.

Sometimes, I feel like a passenger in my own life. Recently, though, I have decided to take a little more care of what information enters my head and what I do with it. I get a little freaked when I perceive that someone is attempting to persuade me that their idea is a good one. 

       'We recommend that you have these Envirovent extractor fans fitted in your kitchen and bathroom. They run continually, checking the air for high humidity, and when the interior humidity reaches 60% or more they come on much stronger and vent the humidity outside.'

All well and good, except that the outside humidity in the region I live in is rarely below 60%; I would never be able to open a window, even on Summer evenings to cool the interior air, without two 25 Watt fans running full tilt. I explained to the fool that my electricity unit price (kiloWatt) is 25 pence. I suggested that the two fans would hardly ever be not venting humid air and offered to him that fitting the two fans would likely cost me £36 per year each, if they ran for 16 hours a day, bearing in mind, that especially in Summer, all my windows are usually open in the early morning to allow the cool (and very humid) air in. Outside humidity today at 05:15 a.m. was 90% and with the windows closed overnight, the interior humidity was 70%. (24 hours a day would cost me £54.75 for each Envirovent fan to run - a total of £109.50 added to my electric bill per year, at current prices). Incidentally, that is roughly the same amount I pay for an average full months electric. This means my electric bill would rise by 8% or more. Outrage across the nation! A dehumidifier and a couple of solar panels should cost less than £700 and the warm interior air won't be sucked out in those cold Winter months!

I am tickled that we use the French word 'vent' which means 'wind' in French. If we eradicated all French words from our language, such as the French removed English words from their language, we would have to say, 'windilation' instead of 'ventilation'. 

Taking charge of what affects me has included seeking specific medication for my PTSD. I recently had an appointment with a mental health team, who were not keen on giving me chemicals and were much more aligned to talk-therapy in its various forms. I was amused when I was asked, still at the triage stage, about conversations I had, had, that I found interesting or satisfying. I told them I once had a conversation with a woman outside Aldi, with a high IQ, which probably matched my own.

       'How many times have you had a conversation like that?'

       'Once only in my whole life. We really got on so well, and just understood one another. She even let her ice-lollies, which she had just bought from Aldi, completely melt; they returned to liquid, she was so loathe to leave; as was I.' I answered.

I can't help thinking that they, the two triage mental health nurses, had come across a problem. Talk therapy requires, I think, a rapport to be built, and the patient should be entirely comfortable, in order for the patient to be able to trust the listener, and so be able to visit memories which make them feel vulnerable. They, the triage nurses, if they are at all sensible, would need to find someone with an IQ close to my own. Only 3% of the Global North have an IQ that matches or exceeds mine. Good luck with that, then! Oh, if only people would just listen. I can't help thinking I am ahead of them, and medication is really only the most likely solution. I doubt that they will catch on. That is the bane of having a high IQ and not being in the right environment for it to be socially, financially, or otherwise useful to civilisation.

Also in my scrapbook: Seiche Event - from Oceanography

A seiche is when strong winds really rapidly changes the height of water - able to move an entire pond uphill. When the strong wind diminishes, the body of water returns back to its previously level position.

Pressing a point in order to bring about change, or have a position wherein one has, at least some, control in one's life, requires consistent and focused effort. Falter, get tired, confused, or hesitate, and the original drive and energy becomes only a seiche event. 

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Yellow and Pink

[ 5 minute read ] 

Weak through Superstition

This is not about football (soccer). I had to look at YouTube videos to see the football shirt colours.

I have noticed that very small countries have been playing Football (soccer) giants in The World Cup. I thought yesterday, that Cape Verde should really have been playing a small country such as Curacao in their opening match just to give one of those teams a real boost if they win. Curacao (population about 560,000 in 2023) lost against Germany, 7 goals to 1. Yet, surprisingly, Cape Verde (population about 490,000 in 2021) managed a draw against one of the favourites to win The World Cup, Spain. How?

I wondered at how a tiny country could field a team that play so effectively against the reigning European Cup winners. The Spain footballers wore dark-red football shirts. Could that be significant? The Cape Verde players must surely have been exposed to how other teams play, and not just from their ten island country. I suggest they have, due to their geographical location off the West African coast, played West African teams. The Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) is a West African country, surrounded by Liberia, Mali, Ghana, Burkino Faso and Guinea and has a coastline on The Gulf of Guinea. My limited knowledge and understanding leads me to believing that this region still has a lot of superstitious people in it. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find witch-doctors reading the future from chicken entrails in Guinea, for example. Indeed, Wikipedia alludes to the Voodoo or Vodou (sic) practiced in Haiti to be directly connected to the continuance of West African links as new slaves arrived in the Caribbean in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti

Copeland and Griggs did a study in 1986, and concluded that the universal symbol for mourning is not black; in many Asian countries, it is white; in Brazil, it is purple; yellow in Mexico, and dark-red in the Ivory Coast. Without deep research, that is, quite frankly, beyond my current resources; such as time-constraints and personal contacts, or a plane ticket to wherever the Cape Verde football team is currently staying, I cannot even suggest that any of the Cape Verde players have genetic links to the West African mainland. I strongly suspect though, that they are not entirely ignorant to any superstitions that are held there. 

Did Spain play against a team that were superstitiously regarding them as already finished; mourning a loss that occurs in the future simply because the Spanish players were wearing dark red shirts?

Did Germany win 7-1 against Curacao because the colour of the football shirts had no significance on how the players felt, and Germany fielded a far superior team than Curacao? Surely, Spain had far superior players than Cape Verde?

Did The Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) beat Ecuador 1-0, because the Ecuadorian footballers in their purple football shirts have a similar approach to the people of Brazil, where purple is the colour of mourning? (Copeland and Griggs, 1986). Did Ecuador lose because they saw their loss before they even kicked the ball?

All of this might be a long stretch of imagination to many Europeans, yet, Copeland and Griggs found that in the UK and France, red is the most masculine colour, while for people in the USA it is blue. (Pink is the most feminine in the UK, while for most of the world, it is yellow). The UK has very strong ideas and beliefs that are firmly fixed in our minds.

We know that many people believe that 'thinking you can creates the force that can'. There are thousands of sports psychologists employed across the world, and I suspect there isn't a single gold medal or cup winner in sports that has never met at least one of them. 

In a world that is consistently moving towards promoting fairness, should personal belief, including superstition, be considered more often? We know that football teams have both a home and an away football strip and these colours are determined before they all play against one another - You can't have one team playing at home in a white kit against another team also wearing their white away strip. I think there is a third kit of a different colour for those meets.

       'Do you, people of Ivory Coast have any objection to your players wearing the colour of mourning, dark-red?'

       'No, no. We can put aside our fundamental and deeply held beliefs that are an integral part of our culture!'

       'Jolly Good! After all, the machismo Brazilian players are really just weak for wearing the feminine yellow, eh?'

       'But they win.' whispered one Ivory Coast player to another.

       'Ecuador, you don't speak Portuguese like the Brazilians do, do you?'

       'We speak Spanish and so we can understand each other.'

      'How do you feel about wearing purple?'

       'Well....'

***

I am vegetarian. When I go to job interviews, I, of course, make sure I have bathed soon beforehand and I am wearing clean clothes. I sometimes cycle to the job interviews and get slightly warm. I have two choices if I cycle: coat myself in petroleum jelly to block my pores so no smelly sweat gets out, or make sure my diet for the two days preceding the interview does not include garlic, fish, milk, or meat (especially mutton). I don't ever have a mutton problem. I do, on occasion eat bacon and sausages, albeit rarely.

I cannot know essential information about the job interviewer that may be relevant to my success as a job applicant. How good is their sense of smell; women are considered to have a better sense of smell than men. Are they vegetarian or vegan? A while ago, when I did not eat dairy products, I could smell that other people had. I grew up with cows living next door and dairy herds twice walking through my village. People who eat dairy products smelt like cows to me, when I didn't eat cheese or use cow milk.

I had to spell my surname yesterday, again, after a Chinese receptionist, with a strong Chinese accent I might add, asked me if Cadwell is spelt with a 'K'. Why do people think it might be spelt with a 'K'? Because, I suspect, with a Summer sun-tan, I look like I might be from Asia. Do people think the hard 'C' in Cadwell, is a 'K' as in 'Khan'. Bearing this is mind, I also understand that there may be an element of racism lurking in the shadows; another deep and firm belief that people cannot shake; they were heavily influenced by their parents and culture, or they have empirical bad experiences that they have turned into an heuristic.

We know that our sense of smell is more effective in evoking memories in us than any of our other senses. It is ontological or 'being'. It is so deep within us that we are swerved from completing an action simply due to an attendant smell that we find abhorrent. 

Superstition, I suggest, is something that, like our sense of smell, simply cannot be ignored, particularly if we have re-inforced it with confirmation bias.

Should players in all team sports wear colours that have no significance anywhere in the world, in every match they play? Not green (the colour of disease in countries with jungles and forbidden in certain parts of Indonesia);  not blue (it favours male players from the USA); Not black, white, purple or dark-red (colours of mourning); not yellow or pink (effeminate colours). I think we can stop there, because I am certain that it is misogyny that makes male players, perhaps, not want to, to them, show a sign of weakness.

I conclude that all teams should wear either yellow or pink when they play. Mexico can always wear pink because yellow is a colour of mourning there. However, I suspect The Netherlands would complain because orange, their national team colour, is known to be a colour that denotes strength and assertion. 

Goodbye machismo-ism, goodbye. Your days are numbered. Are The Romans finally about to be defeated? Oh, by the way, thanks for the language.

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Tell the truth

[ 6 minute read ] 

Come back, I haven't finished

For many years, I have been aware and wildly frustrated that people I am talking to take snippets of my words and run with them; off into a wilderness who knows where. As a teenager, I became aware of this, and bought a Thesaurus to help me try to explain my teenage angst, or whatever it was at the time that meant I had to try to make someone's mind stand still long enough for me to poke my own thoughts into. Really, that is so close to taking their mind hostage as to make me feel more than a bit queasy.

Realistically, I really did want the other person to stop thinking and just listen to what I am saying and then with all the facts, premises and other vastly important information I had elucidated, let their mind start working and process what I have said. Control was NOT in my hands!

Personally, I have a slight problem with making direct declarative statements. I think most people do.

       'Just say what you want to say. For Goodness Sake! Spit it out!'

       'Promise you won't be angry.'

But I never have those kind of conversations any more. If anything, the first person speaking, in that little conversation, is at fault. Their words show impatience, a lack of focus, and an inability to hold information in their heads. The second person might be scared, confused, or just not able to summarise what is in their head.

I suppose it takes training and a will to learn how to listen, in order to not make any judgement on what we hear. We should, I feel, wait until the other person has stopped speaking; interrupting is a sure sign that we are processing information, when we should probably just be listening, because most of us only pass information obliquely.

       'Does my bum look big in this?'

       'Does this shirt look good on me?' (Buttons straining just above the waist).

The second question could well be the perfect answer, under the circumstances, to the first question.

I was weirdly curious to know if anyone was using any of my old business names (dissolved now) so I Googled one. Actually, I 'Ducked' it (DuckDuckGo). I was amused that the returns, on the first index page, were all on how to write essays. I wish I had found those sites two years ago, when I started having to write essays. 

It has long irked me that The Open University doesn't have a unit on essay-writing and a unit on arguments at Level 1. Instead, I feel, that I had to fumble in the dark, guessing what I was supposed to do, and having no checks on my progress until the feedback from the first assignment comes back. For me, there is a huge lack of available information. Essay writing is not like riding a bike; none of us need to get a feel for it; there are hard and fast rules and personalising essay formats is just not tolerated. 

       'Do this, and do that!' 

       'Yes, but how?'

       'Work it out for yourself!'

Does that sound familiar? Now then; I want to be able to have conversations with people who know how to have good conversation. It is entirely useless to me if someone cannot present an argument, or give good instruction. Are there any lessons on how to give good instruction for beginners? Of course, they exist for school-teachers and qualified people, but wouldn't it be fine if everyone could get some kind of instruction on how to instruct?

       'Right then, young school-leaver. Here is where you will be working. Get on with it.'

       'How?'

       'Work it out for yourself' This said under their breath.

The first thing I would do is make sure no-one had a mobile phone they could dive into with the slightest excuse. I was on a forklift training course and there was a chap who had poor English. On the same course as him were two English people. Instead of engaging them in a conversation, he used his phone to translate a word, which he did not understand, in a 'work-book' .

Now, call me a fool, but wouldn't he get a better learning outcome by discussing the meaning of the word?

Anyone who is paying attention, must by now have noticed that I started by expressing my desire for linear conversation, without the bells and whistles; just straight-up honest and direct statements, and now I am promulgating an idea that fuzzy conversation works well for me. Am I confused? Not at all. Both modes of conversation are essential in good social interaction, in my crooked mind. The issue is, do any of us know how to effectively use each mode, and when is the best time to do it?

I can't help feeling that I am outlining the ever-frustrating position we all find ourselves in; there is no manual for life. Why not? Because no-one bothered to write one. Just like at a pantomime, the crowd shouted as one:

       'Oh, no-one ever could!'

Let's look at this from a different angle to how we might have become accustomed to looking at things.

If you have a secret, you use your mental ability to conceal it. If you know a secret, you might find it pleasurable to keep it or reveal it as gossip. In this latter position, of knowing a secret, we reward ourselves by thinking we are favoured to have been told it; trusted. If we reveal it, we hope to promote ourselves in the eyes of the other person, the listener; we are revealing our hierarchical position in another relationship.

This reminds me of a kind of joke I heard some years ago.

A man and Kylie Minogue are marooned on an uninhabited island. Eventually, she and he have sex. The next day, the man walks all the way around the coast of the island and comes back to Kylie Minogue, and says:

       'I just had sex with Kylie Minogue!'

       'I know!'

       'I just had to tell someone!'

Back to my point:

If we keep a secret, we are measured in our conversational approach. If we are clever, we will not have conversations that might elicit any questions on our activities that match the secret we are trying to keep.

       'Who ate my biscuits?' cried the woman holding the cupboard door open. In this case, it was you. You ate them.

A fool might mention biscuits in a conversation in the following week if they stole the biscuits. But, most of us wouldn't; quite simply because we know we would re-ignite the wounded and silent accusations that the victim might be harbouring.

From this, we can easily understand that we can indeed control our conversation if we are properly invested in it; emotionally, financially or academically. So why do we not feel invested in our everyday conversations? Why do we have only passing respect for the people we just shove our feelings at, or carelessly push information towards?

It took me over ten years to stop practicing not lying, and just be comfortable with the truth. It took me the same ten years to be confident that I am honourable. There is a problem though; it scares the heebie-jeebies out of some people. It might even make them feel somehow inadequate. It shouldn't; I chose to make an effort, that's all. If I was fit and energetic, I wouldn't run past people shouting, 'You lazy slug!' It has had a negative effect that Jack Nicholson in the film, 'A few Good Men' brought to the fore:' You can't handle the truth!' I never remember that important point.

A while ago, I had a problem with someone jumping on my 'band-wagon' of what I had written about. I was, at the time, practicing giving just enough information to allow the reader to be stimulated and then ponder the subject. The 'idea-thief', excited by his new thinking, filled in all the gaps in his own subsequent blog posts; effectively giving out 'spoilers'. How crass! In his fervent desire to be relevant, he robbed readers of their own thoughts and any chance of waking up a bit.

'For many years, I have been aware and wildly frustrated that people I am talking to take snippets of my words and run with them; off into a wilderness who knows where.'

https://www.monash.edu/student-academic-success/excel-at-writing/how-to-write/essay/how-to-build-an-essay

https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/referencing-style-guides/harvard

(includes how to reference all sorts of sources, including Act of Parliament, emails, maps and films, etc.)

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Things aren't what they seem

[ 5 minute read ] 

Who do you believe?

I read that Welsh farmers used to toast their cows by name with cider, (celebrate not cook) on the Twelfth Night and then hang a cake with a hole in it on the first cow's horn. Omens were read from how the cake was tossed off by the cow. If it didn't throw it off immediately it was tickled or pricked until it did. Depending on which direction it was thrown determined how the future might unfold. Essentially, everyone, of course, was seeking affirmation of good luck.

It seems that farmers had a more fairy-tale relationship with their animals in folk-lore than they might today. Daisy, the cow in 'Jack and the Beanstalk', however, must have been quite old because Jack decided to trade it for what can only be considered to be desperate or wild hope; a single magic bean.

In the modern world, away from fairy-tales but still clasping fantasy to our breasts as an alternative reality, hope solidifies into something almost real. The anticipation of being a winner; having all the worries of the day dissolve through serendipitous chance can be overwhelmingly inviting; a day or month or year that is really just a fleeting moment in what seems to be an eternity. Of course, many years can go by before people are relieved of their worry, and our memories are reluctant to remember further back than five years or so, to how things really were. It is at this point that we start to use selective memory. If our minds were books, selective memory would be focused on where we left the bookmarks or dog-eared the pages.

Jack, in 'Jack and the Beanstalk' steals the ogre's golden-egg-laying chicken, I think. Anyone with a chicken in medieval times might have had an income. Chickens feed themselves as they roam. Chickens laying eggs must have been seen as providing free money, if the eggs were sold at the market.

In the year 1600 in England:

       'How much for the chicken? I am hungry.'

       'Let's see. It is a young chicken, not even a full year old, so it will lay a lot of eggs for at least another eighteen months; say one a day. If I sell you one egg it would be for a penny. That makes the chicken worth more than £2 5' 3d.' (two pounds, five shillings and three pence). Realistically, I think you would need to be one egg short of an omelette to pay 1d (one old penny when there were 240 pennies to the pound) for a single egg. However.....

According to the national archives site, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk this is equivalent to £311.95 in 2017. In the year 1600, this is 45 days wage for a skilled tradesman; or the price of a cow; or six stones of wool (84 lb or 38 kg).

It is no wonder then that the ogre thinks his chicken lays golden eggs and Jack steals it.

However, the Jack and the Beanstalk story first appeared in the 1730s and the same amount of money was worth only £266.51, or 22 days wage for a skilled worker.

I always think that fairy-tales are set in medieval times. I suspect I fool myself by removing economic and customary constraints just to be able to get something out of the story. By removing metrics by which something can be measured I am, like everyone, susceptible to manipulation.

It would take a pretty shrewd person at a market to price their chicken to be the same as the cost of a cow in the year 1600, yet the numbers add up. That is  how much a young chicken was worth to the right person; a person who would otherwise buy an egg a day for the next eighteen months. Of course, anyone with a cow might not swap it for the chicken because if the cow is young and healthy it too has a continuing value, in that it produces milk each day, which can be sold at the same market.

Of course, I use spreadsheets, which make calculating the value of a resource easy for me. I even factor in 'Opportunity Costs'. Yet, I still find, in our modern world, some warped thinking.

Yesterday, I had a conversation on how important it is to have extractor fans in the bathroom and kitchen. Many of us would say, of course we should have extractor fans in these rooms to avoid having damp and mould in our homes.

       'We could open the windows.' I said. I noticed the look of confusion on the man's face. I knew he was thinking it would let the heat out and the cold in. That, however, is exactly what needs to be done to avoid moisture-laden air from condensing on the walls. Extractor fans are not sold to us as doing this though.

       'What about the heaters in the kitchen and bathroom? They should be on to heat the rooms. It would be a waste of energy to open the windows' He replied.

       'Warm air has a higher capacity to hold water vapour.'  I said, 'It needs to go straight out the window.' He was not convinced. He thinks we all have a right to luxury, so having a cold bathroom is just plain wrong for him.

He advocated for installing an extractor fan that constantly runs and detects humidity levels. When it detects humidity levels of 60% or above it switches to a faster mode and dumps the interior air outside. The thing is with this, is it removes all the attendant features of this air, including the heat it holds, and, of course, kitchen smells. It is a bit like opening a window, except you don't get a choice as to when the air is shunted away. These extractor fans also cost money (electric costs) to do it.

       'It is such a small amount of money; hardly any at all. The manufacturer's data suggests that they cost about £5 to £7 per year.'

       'On trickle mode; when it is just ticking over and detecting the air for moisture.'

My spreadsheet for this tells me that such a device uses only 2.2 Watts on trickle mode. My portable radio has 4 Watt speakers and they hardly move at all. Alarm bells are ringing in my head. He was undeterred. I knew he would be.

       'Yes, but they don't come fully on until it detects 60% humidity or more.' He triumphantly cried.

       'In England, it is unusual for the outside humidity levels to drop below 60%. It happens much more in summer and almost not at all in Autumn, Winter, and Spring. Simply opening a window for some fresh air would have a financial cost.'

Some numbers: Last night. at about 10pm. the local humidity, where I live, was 73%, and rose to over 90% by 4am. At 3pm yesterday it was 48%. Today, at 07:00 am, the humidity level is 70%. Opening a window right now would, if I had those extractor fans, cost me money; they have no off switch.

Insane, isn't it? The whole point of installing extractor fans in a bathroom is ostensibly to remove humidity, yet warm air holds more water-vapour than cold air. You can see this for yourself; you don't see steam from your kettle during the summer because the warm summer air is capturing the water-vapour. The actual twist of thinking that needs to be made is not believing that it is humidity that needs to be shifted; it is a question of temperature differentials. Ideally, all the walls in a home need to be really quite warm so water-vapour does not condense on them. But, an extractor fan that detects humidity levels will remove the heat in a room simply because they are designed to reduce the humidity. Crazy! Open a window yourself; it's free.

I calculated that it would cost me more than ₤130 per year at today's energy prices, if I had those fans installed.

It might seem now, that a chicken at a market in the year 1730 really is worth as much as 22 days wage for a skilled tradesman. Loosely, because I don't use tradespeople, I might then guess that a chicken is, today, worth over £2200.

Prices, inflation and values are all a bit skewed though. I used to get 50p a week pocket money as a nine year-old. Back then, I could buy twenty packets of crisps with that. The equivalent value today, if we use packets of crisps as a metric, is over £20. So, there definitely needs to be a common and consistent metric we use to value things.

Things are rarely what they might seem to be.

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Mental Health

What could you be?

[ 7 minute read ] 

I blame the parents (and maybe me)

My neighbour, Jim, such were the difficulties he had, had problems with social interaction and, I suppose, general knowledge on how things work. Things that are obvious to most of us he just didn't seem to understand.

       'Jim, you will have to cut the grass with shears before you use a push-mower on it'. The grass was eighteen inches tall (45cm) and it was wet from recent rain. Even dry, the front roller on the mower would flatten the grass and the cutter would not connect with it.

       'I have!' He hadn't. The grass was eighteen inches tall, and wet. Eventually, he left the grass and, months later, bought a cheap electric hover mower, which he almost never uses. He doesn't have much of a lawn now anyway. The previous residents had a green and manicured lawn.

He also bought a strimmer; to cut the grass growing against the washing line posts. He thought it was a good idea to put the rotating hub of the strimmer right up against the posts. The strimmer line, or cord, inevitably kept snapping. It snapped as soon as the hub got too near the posts. He would pull a bit more line out and then do exactly the same thing, and break it again. What should have taken about three minutes took him over an hour. I knew that nail scissors would have been more effective. I didn't tell him because I know he would have, in his embarrassment, said, 'I know, I used them!' The annoying thing is, the strimmer has a noisy internal combustion engine and he never considered 7am too early to use it for an hour, on and off. 

       'Finally, he has finished!'

       'Oh! No he hasn't'.

One day, I joined him in his garden, to dismantle a shed. He had no clue how to effectively do this and, impatient, I asked if he had a cutting tool of some kind. His competence with a screwdriver was, to my mind, on par with a four year old. He fetched a battery powered hand-held circular saw. When I pointed out where to cut, he, true to form, just jammed the saw against the wood. It stopped. He tried again; it stopped. I asked to have a go and made the cut.

       'Sometimes, it just doesn't work and other times it does,' He said, puzzled. The teeth of the saw have to be introduced to the cut gently and slowly. Even heavy duty cutting equipment has a maximum speed at which it can advance. He had no clue about this. By this time, I was convinced that he was a fool.

A few years went by and a Canadian woman moved in with him. It doesn't matter what Global North nation she comes from; we, in the Global North, all have comparable kinds of background and approaches to life. I suppose, her nationality would only be relevant if she brought a wholly different approach and culture to the story, such as might be found in Global South countries, where I suppose they have a much more practical aspect to their lives; I imagine they make and mend as they go along a bit more than most of the Global North does. Anyway, a woman from a Global North country moved in with him. Her name is Avril.

The post-person delivered a 'Do Not Bend' package addressed to Jim's live-in girlfriend, through my letter-box. I waited for her to leave her home to give it to her. I didn't knock on Jim's and Avril's door to give Avril the package because, when Avril's parents previously visited from Canada, I had occasion to chat with them, and I felt that Jim would not have the social grace to give them a gift, or souvenir of England, so I decided to give them a gift. You can buy souvenirs for yourself but being given a gift from a local has so much more weight, I feel. Jim, I considered, wouldn't think of this. I had been given a published cookbook written by one of my neighbour friends. It was all I had of any worth. It was still in its shrink-wrapped plastic covering; brand new. 

To give this cookbook gift, I knocked on Jim's and Avril's door. Incidentally, Jim thinks it is only his door. Jim answered and I said I wanted to speak to Avril's mum.

       'I will see if she will talk to you.' Weird, I thought but I decided that Jim was just being Jim. She came to the door and opened it wider to talk to me, but not before I saw Jim's leg withdrawing to behind the opening door, which instantly told me he intended to eavesdrop. I was tempted to mention this to Avril's mum, 'Does he always do that?' but pushed the idea away.

       'Here is a gift from our village; a cookbook. My friend wrote it. She lives just up the road, there. If you can't take it to Canada then I am sure that Avril and Jim might be able to use it.' She thanked me and shut the door, nonplussed.

So when the Do Not Bend package addressed to Avril came through my letter box I was certainly not going to make Jim hide behind the door among their coats again. As she left for work: 'Avril, I have something for you.' She, of course, jumped because I inadvertently sprang up from behind a separating hedge; I had been sitting on my doorstep. She thanked me and took the package. Jim followed her out of the garden onto the drive.

       'The delivery person is just lazy and selfish and couldn't be bothered to come to my house', Jim exclaimed.

       'Jim', I said, 'You have a continental style letter box stuck to your wall that won't allow items to get in without being bent'. I took the package from Avril to demonstrate the size of it. I apologised to Avril for just snatching it from her hands. She, of course, smiled and brushed it aside because she recognised that I did not intend to be rude. I gave it back to her and they left in Jim's car.

The Pygmalion Effect

Jim used to allow his spirit to loom over me while I slept. 

       'Who are you and why are you here?'

       'Jim's spirit, I live here, and have done since before you came here.'

What with his seeming inability to successfully and happily interact with the world, I had, after a couple of years decided he was a fool. Something wasn't right. We all have something weird about us. It is no 'biggie'. (What? If we can use the Australian 'no worries', surely we can say 'no biggie'!).  Look at those punctuation marks; four in a row! 

It is really quite hard to ward off wandering spirits. What can you do? You can't grab hold of them and shove them out your front door. They can't hear you speak your native tongue in the human world. Only magic language or the language of your own spirit can converse with them. The trouble is, when we wake up our brains start to focus on real life threats like bears and tigers and things, and we are programmed, through modern interaction in our societies, to use our 'mother' tongue.

Jim never used to go out. He ordered shopping deliveries and never seemed to socialise beyond, I suppose, going to his parents for Sunday dinner. For at least two years, even when Avril moved in, he and Avril wouldn't go out. They went on holiday once or twice; a new thing for Jim, I am sure.

After, I think, four years of Avril living with him, they go out most weekends and even stay away overnight. She, being a school teacher, has many periods in a year during which she does not need to go to a workplace. Jim has a job using a computer. Theoretically, he can work anywhere in the world. They now stay away from home about four or five times a year, for days or weeks at a time. I think they have two holidays a year, somewhere.

Avril saw something in Jim that, as a teacher, I suppose, she felt she could draw out of him. I think she knew that he just needed his hand held a little, and needed to be introduced to new experiences to build his confidence. There is nothing like being loved to build confidence and trust.

The Pygmalion Effect is when individuals tend to perform up to a level that others expect them to perform at. Jim wasn't really aware, I suggest, that I considered him to be incompetent at a lot of things, but he was bothered that I saw him fruitlessly trying to cut his grass; he accused me of being nosy. To his mind, I should never look out of my windows, it seems.

Avril, being a teacher; and perhaps being Canadian is relevant after all, would have had, I think, some training to deal with autism and learning difficulties alike. She, unlike me, can see potential in people that can be nurtured, and knows how to do it. Good Crikeyness! She has some patience!

I miss Jim, the looming zombie that, in my imagination bumped endlessly into the walls in his home and aimlessly bounced off them with no clear thought in his head. I don't think his spirit is troubled anymore. I think he finally trusts someone, and feels safe, and doesn't want to claim a spiritual space.

       'Why are you here? Go away!'

       'Jim, I live here!'

I will tell you why I miss him. I, like most of us, measure myself against the people around me to give myself some idea of how well I am doing. I suppose I have been aware of a local social hierarchy but I have never bothered to subscribe to protocols to secure any position in it. Now that Jim seems comfortable, I cannot help but think the see-saw has tipped the other way. I am, by my thoughts and deeds, a fool.

'The Pygmalion Effect is a tendency named after the protagonist of a Greek myth. Pygmalion was a gifted sculptor who created a statue of a woman so perfect he fell in love with his creation. After Pygmalion desperately prayed to Aphrodite, the Goddess of love, she took pity on him by bringing the statue to life.'  (Josh Kaufman, 2010).

Josh Kaufman, 'The Personal MBA',  Portfolio Penguin, 2010

Josh Kaufman goes on to say that the Pygmalion effect explains why all of our relationships are, in a very real sense, self-fulfilling prophesies. In other words, we benefit from what we put into them.

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Have we met and what did we do in the future?

[ 5 minute read ] 

What chapter are you on?

It seems I am a ghost or a zombie and quieter than a cat. Sally, my next door neighbour, was cutting her hedge and didn't notice me when I walked up to her, bare-footed, with a handful of strawberries for her. The look of horror on her face will stay with me for a long time; probably the whole weekend. What did she expect after she jumped out of her skin?

We just stood there, staring at each other; she with shears in her hands and me with my right arm extended as though I wanted a fist-bump. Eventually, she placed one open palm under my fist and I released the strawberries. I wouldn't say there was a sense of relief but I would also say I felt a change in her. She didn't smile and thank me; she, instead, turned away and started walking towards her front door; not a word. I told her, to her retreating back, about the damp and mould experts who visited me in the week. She smiled then.

It puzzles me.

In a fantasy medieval world, I might have been paying a token amount for entry into her secret areas:

       'This is the last time, Martin. I know you serve the community well and I suppose I can contribute to the goodwill we all want to offer you, but I am a good Christian and I have only myself and sanctuary in my home to give. You know I live frugally.'

On a spiritual plane, we might have once met before and she thought she had killed me but I am alive or re-incarnated:

       'I see I was not ruthless enough, and left off from drowning you too soon, and I have failed to suppress your force long enough to make it last. What now?' She walked away in silent resignation.

She was alarmed! Both of those imagined scenarios are steeped in resignation, aren't they. Yet, she might have simply been confused. How did I manage to suddenly appear next to her when she is convinced her hearing is so acute that she can hear the hedgehogs munching outside with the noise passing through double-glazing, and she is woken by her cat walking towards her bed?

Of course, Sally has a very loving cat and I know Sally is affectionate and caring. I am pretty certain that her cat recognises the change in Sally's breathing as she starts to wake up and pads across the floor towards her for a cuddle. Hearing hedgehogs is a bit of a mystery to me though. I am no expert but a passing car is pretty loud and cannot really penetrate the double-glazing. Maybe, Sally leans out of her window and listens.

It doesn't signify. That is an old expression I got from the writer C.S. Forester in his books on Hornblower. Through some kind of magic transmogrification it means 'It doesn't add up' or 'It doesn't make sense as it stands'. Just like Shakespeare wrote in a language that the people of his time could understand, but modern people need a translation book for, it seems that Sally and I speak different languages, or have lived on different planets and now both find ourselves bumping up to one another on Earth.

If Sally and I were reading the same book but separately, I imagine she might have gotten to the pages where we know each other much better and either we are close, as in relaxed in each other's company, or have fallen out for some reason. It isn't hard for me to lazily lean on an old and obsolete notion that she might be, as a woman, absorbing the passion of a story of love and betrayal, while I, on the other hand, stereo-typically, as a man, might be reading the same book but enjoying different parts; the interplay of characters but with a bent towards understanding the function and progression of relationships; work-like, if you will. It is difficult for me to put this notion aside. Of course, this is glaring sexism, even misogyny, by the back door. Yet, I would offer that I have detached emotions and all people are romantic fantasists to me; people who skillfully and silently weave their own lives into stories, with a hope for a future they have already secretly enjoyed.

Sally, is an intelligent woman. I admire her. She is not silly; she is practical. I sometimes think I have had glimpses from the future. Certainly, when I was driving throughout Europe I have had a prescience that there is something blocking the road beyond a blind bend and braked almost to a crawl as I rounded the curve. Yup, loose cows or broken-down vehicle. I think Sally might be a few chapters ahead of me in the same 'book' we are reading. Actually not, she has somehow flicked forward a few pages to read a passage or two and then returned to the 'story' in the right place, where ALL of us are reading. You know, when something is happening in a story and we simply must know the resolution; will they, won't they?

I have had a few relationships, both romantic and platonic, in which there was an expectation that I would fill a role. The classic one in the romance realm is when a long-term relationship breaks down and then, unbeknownst to me that there ever was one, I turn up; perhaps even having been snared by a well-prepared web, and innocently think I am entering a fresh relationship, only to find that it is stale from the outset. I have had to fill the role of a long-term lover, even a married man of many years. It is really sad. I see new relationships as green buds of potential growth that are shaped by the environment and nutrition that the people involved in the relationship give to it. Old relationships, of course, need fertiliser, just as plants and trees do.

I married a woman who had a notion of how we should be. She didn't tell me. The marriage failed after only a year or so, but trundled along for another three years. Her fantasies had advanced our relationship so far that even with a limited amount of prescience I was left only guessing. Truth be known, I never tried to guess or work out what was going on because I was always wrong-footed.

       'Why won't you comply with what I imagined you to be like?'

       'Why, are you not in the now, without ever having read forward to see what the resolution is in a fantasy novel?'

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If I stand on these books...

[ 2 minute read ] 

Access Denied....Access Denied.....Declined

Storytellers, or perhaps I mean creative writers, often find it difficult to come up with something new, or do I mean fresh?

I have a stack of books, a tiny library if you will; right from Arts and Crafts and Cooking through to Business Law, passing through, of course, Marketing, Economics and Logisitics (including Systems Theory). I even have a book on the Weather. It should never be difficult to come up with something strange to write about. In any case, people are funnily weird. I need only to open my front door to be amazed.

There is a man who walks his dog in the morning and his wife walks at least twenty feet behind him; never beside him. They never talk or acknowledge each other. I think he must have strayed at some time in the past and she follows him to make sure he stays on the marital path.

There is the family whose children have dirty and old 1990s plastic scooters, you know, those ones that look like they are inflated; and the push-chair buggy is filthy; but the parents insist they have jobs such as lecturer and NHS consultant.

I used to pretend that I sailed (until I did) just to be able to say I do something interesting. One day, I cut my finger quite deeply and needed micro-surgery. The nurse told me she sails as well. She asked me what I sail. Ooops!

There is the man whom everybody thinks is highly knowledgeable, and he is; but he also isn't. He has gaps in his thinking that make me think something went wrong. I think he just stopped learning because he got full.

There is the chap who works in the Co-op who I think might be clever but he says he hides it in case people think he is stupid. He looks over his shoulder when he says this. He thinks people have a gravity that attracts the truth or lies or something.

*

Preparing a post

I don't have much to do today, so I shall spend some time reading the following books to see if I can amalgamate some elements from each:

'Encyclopaedia of Superstitions' by E. & M.A. Radford

'Locke' by Michael Ayers

The Pocket Oxford Latin Dictionary

'Simply Psychology' by Michael Eysenck

'Atmosphere, Weather & Climate' (4th edition) by Roger G. Barry and Richard Chorley

'Principles of Marketing' by Kotler, Wong, Armstrong & Saunders

and perhaps

'Logistics and Supply Chain Management' by Martin Christopher

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Don't break the fourth wall

'You are so measured'

[ 4 minute read ]

Just lately, everybody has wanted a piece of me. I feel like that stretchy toy of the 1970s (I think it was then), the one that kids could seemingly pull its arms and legs to extreme lengths. I don't like it. 'Yes, how can I help you?' 'Oh, hello. What a surprise; yes, of course I will'. I am not someone who demands other people's time and attention. It is no secret that I abhor SmartPhones. The blog post I wrote 'The Lighthouse of My Mind' (Tags: dopamine, connection, isolation, PTSD, similarity) makes it clear that I regard constant social interaction as being no better than poor quality furniture in 'The Sims': low level top-ups that deny us recognising what comfort and relief really is after any kind of absence of it.

The Open University asked me how they can help, because I have PTSD. Kindly, they want to set things up early for me; you know, make sure I am comfortable with stuff and how would I like the tutors to be. Really? There are two things here. Just leave me alone and let the tutors be however they want to be. If I am completely honest though, my response to the gentle probing is probably more indicative of outside influences that have quite severely bothered me; and a reluctance to explain something that is a dark cloud that is invisible against a dark background. 

We all have the same dark cloud sometimes. Dark clouds are a warning that something foreboding or treacherous or heavy is coming. That isn't really what I mean by 'we all have dark clouds sometimes'. I think I mean that we have a fullness, such as, we expect rain when we see dark clouds on the horizon. Story-writers use them as 'Uh Oh!' but I suppose I might think of my dark cloud of the last few weeks as 'I need a dump'. Maybe I need a refreshing break at a place that can teach me Yoga and Pilates. Even the thinking of it makes me feel lighter. Essentially, I told The Open University to leave me alone because I am tired.

Normally, I leave about twenty or so tomato plants outside my house for people to take; I grow them specifically for that purpose. I have had so many visitors though that I am running out and there isn't any for the neighbours and passer-bys. There never was. Selfishly, this year I had an idea to keep all the plants myself, about forty, and then have a constant stream of tomatoes to eat, but these last two weeks it has been; 'Here! a couple of leeks (pulled from the garden as they watch) and have these three tomato plants and oh! some mint too'. My garden is getting quite sparse. I suppose that is the price for actively deciding to be selfish instead of just being selfish as a natural character attribute. Trying to be selfish seems to mean that we are not. I often feel that other people are blind to other people and giving something of value away is just too much. The last two weeks has been for me, 'Here, take my hopes and dreams with you'. The tomato plants were started in March and carefully nurtured. I would tilt my head to one-side and coo at them, 'I can't wait to see you bigger and abundant with fruit, my little beauties'. Yet, I am gratified to see the joy that my guests (mostly officials) get from armfuls of 'leaving presents' though. The pleasure I experience is short; much shorter than if I kept the plants and tasted the fruits over a couple of months; and of course, it is supremely therapeutic for me to wander around in a garden plucking foodstuffs from the ground. 

Here then, is an idea of the different values we place on our resources. My time is precious to me, but lately I have given it to other people who have no idea of the price. Many of the people see it as cheap. My past time was spent usefully, planting seeds and spending months growing leeks, but has largely ended up being so someone else has a pleasant future, which I didn't plan for. They will have the long fun time of growing tomato plants and the very short time of munching on leeks that took over six months to grow.

It is the transition period, the crossover-point, the time when mine became theirs; and the smile and thanks lasted only a few seconds; when reciprocal futures and fortitude changed or were swapped, that interests me. I think there is a beauty and a magic that is often overlooked in that liminal slit. It is a place in which I would like to live a lot more than I do; but oh, the cost!

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Fall in Thorns

Blackberries on Michaelmas Day

[ 3 minute read ]

I came across a superstition about blackberries yesterday, in 'Encyclopaedia of Superstitions' by E. & M.A. Radford [1961], edited and revised by Christina Hole, 1974 , London, Book Club Associates.

It is unlucky to pick blackberries on or  after the 11th October, which is Old Michaelmas Day. 'According to tradition, Satan cursed the fruit because, when he was cast out of Heaven on the first Michaelmas Day, he fell into a blackberry bush.' I can't help thinking of the 'The Terminator' film when Arnold Swarzenegger falls out of the sky, and the more recent Jumanji films, with Dwayne Johnson, when they have 'lost a life' and are respawned, and fall from the sky. Falling into a blackberry bush would suit the humour of 'Jumanji' nicely, I think.

Before 1961 and 1974 (see Encyclopaedia of Superstitions) some people believed that Satan scorched blackberries by breathing on them, or that Satan stamped and spat on them, or threw his cloak over them and wiped his tail on them. Whoever afterward gathered the berries would have bad luck. Some people even believed that death might occur. Modern medicine and hygiene has, it seems, thwarted much of Satan's power. People don't die from late blackberries these days. But if you eat any from a hedge on the way to a job interview you might not get the job because you are scraping your teeth with your tongue trying to dislodge the seeds.

My mum used to make blackberry jam; a lot of blackberry jam. After about the age of eight or nine my brother, sister and I stopped eating it. We had grown sick of it. Blackberries are high in nutrients and may well have assisted in keeping us healthy and helping our brains grow but we had quite a good diet anyway. My mum seemed to be always eating blackberry jam. It wasn't until I was well into my adulthood that I finally pieced together some outward manifestations of my mum and her childhood that explained her quirkiness. While my siblings and I would wander in the apple orchard of six eating, and six cooking apple trees, picking an apple at random and discarding it if it was even slightly sour; our mum would eat a whole apple, core and all. She fervently harvested blackberries and made jam but never made apple pie, crumbles or jam. As far as I remember she did not even use apples for their pectin to help set the blackberry jam. 

My mum grew up in a tough environment during which an apple was a treat. Even if you didn't want to eat the core you had to because, your parents would be ravaged with rage if you wasted the effort they went to, to get that apple. I think my mum sort of passed by the apples on our trees, because she had grown to have no favour towards them. She did use to make me take some to school for my teachers, who would try to avoid embarrassing me or showing favour by leaving a bag of crisps on my desk (well, once anyway). 

Despite being considered to be holy, apple trees and apples also have superstitions attached to them. If, after the fruit has been picked from a tree and an apple is left behind and hangs there until Spring comes around, a death is foretold. However, in Yorkshire, they believed that at least one apple should be left on the tree for the birds. There is some supposition that originally the apple was left for the fairies, or even some older spirits. (Encyclopaedia of Superstitions [1961] 1974).

I like this one: A hallow-tide game was to fix a piece of apple to a string and twirl it round before a hot fire. The girl whose piece of apple fell off first would be the first to marry. I imagine excited girls with hot cheeks, knees and hands, from the fire, laughing in the company of their friends and sisters, while they fascinate over their crushes. I can almost see their faces lit by the bright flames.