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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Prestige and Status

[6 minute read ] 

Reading a news story on Sky news online this morning about a man who pretended that his Jaguar I-pace electric car was malfunctioning and kept accelerating on the motorway, I thought I might have a look at the cost of such a vehicle. Apparently, this chap ran into finance difficulties and still had £5,000 to pay on his, so he faked a dangerous malfunction hoping to somehow get relief from the debt. A used I-pace might cost £13,000. 

I went to Jaguar's own I-pace website. Just like all television adverts for cars there is no information on the car, just pictures. I was also struck by the focus on allowing the customer to 'build' the car to the customer's specification. Do people really buy only the skin of a car, the look and the prestige that is associated with the name? I think yes. But many people also choose potential partners on the same basis, including the name.

My perspective as far as I know has always been from a functional position. Crudely, this means will the car go from A to B? How much does it cost to run? How reliable is it? Probably the most important factor which likely draws me to a vehicle is, is it suitable for the job I have in mind for it? Much as it might be fun to use an American school bus for the school run, it just isn't practical in the UK, if only because parking is an issue. Ripping fun though. Some girls might like to be delivered and collected to and from school in a pink Sindy or Barbie styled car, as might some boys. Some boys might like being dropped off in a tow truck, just as some girls might. Realistically, the safe bet is probably an expensive SUV though, isn't it?

This is about prestige, not pride. In a world that puts fashion before function I pride myself on repairing my clothes, where I can; and riding a bicycle whenever I can. I pride myself on using only old bicycles that I fix up and haphazardly repair. There is no prestige attached to wearing a pair of shorts with a patch over a back pocket where the habitual placing of house-keys has worn a hole. But I am the sort of person who will just up and go to the local Co-op still wearing muddy clothes from digging the garden. There are no people I want to impress by wearing clean and tidy clothes. That is not to say that I only wear dirty and scruffy clothes. I live in a village and we have two allotments. The only people who I might try to impress are the ones who grow vegetables and cook from scratch. But that is just me. There are plenty of people in my village who are convinced that manicured lawns and perfectly creased clothing is paramount to demonstrating their success. They, credit willing, might see a car in a television advert and think to themselves, 'I like the shape. The maker has a good reputation. It is suitably expensive to be considered an item of prestige.' Just how the television ads ends with a couple of facts, these people might, as an afterthought, recognise that the car will go from A to B when B is 500 miles from A. 'Ah, Jolly good!'

It might seem that I am pillorying these types of people. I am not, Each to their own. I just wouldn't want to be married to one of them, or have one of them at my wedding reception or birthday party. These types of people perceive different problems than I do from the same set of realities. I grow tomato plants in the local clay soil, some people in my road say there is nowhere for them to grow tomato plants. These same people put all their food-waste, grass clippings and hedge trimmings in the green recycling bin, while I put mine on the garden. I fail to understand why people with gardens are allowed to have green bins.

       'Gardens are for enjoying. They should have emerald green manicured lawns and a six foot fence all around so no-one can see in. They are private places where the family can relax.'

       ''Gardens are where food can be grown and relaxing takes the form of nurturing plants and providing a safe place for insects and spiders.' I would counter. 'It is a place where we can dispose of our compostable waste and by doing so improve our environment.'

Plainly, I have a different attachment to my environment than some other people do. I can not fathom why anyone would sweep away the detritus they produce by living a life that realistically is shaped to impress other people; other people, mind, who are carefully selected and have similar values; namely they shape their lives to impress other people who again are selected according to specific criteria, one of which might be for example - they do not take their kids to school in an American school bus. I know, it is me that is weird and not them. They are the modern normal.

My tomato plants have all flopped over and true to their form lie across the ground. They naturally do this and readily grow roots from anywhere the stem or stalk touches the ground. It, however doesn't suit the grower which is why we stake them upright. Usually, I cut the straight young trunks of young ash trees bordering my garden to use as stakes but I have so many plants this year that I have had to forage from wider afield in the village. 

       'If you are looking for the raspberries and blueberries they are further up that way.'

I had no idea what the dog-walking woman was on about. It is highly unlikely that blueberries are growing in our village and I have never seen wild raspberries. 

       'No, I am collecting waste branches to act as stakes for my tomato plants, but thanks.'

       'Oh, I have just cleared my garden. I had to make three trips to the tip with branches and clippings.'

Oh well, I thought. Chalk and Cheese.

Yesterday, outside ALDI, my favourite place for meeting people, I had a quite long conversation with a woman about why people in North Africa have air-conditioning and we don't in the UK. The conversation moved onto humidity and how her Council had fitted extractor fans in her social housing home that automatically come on when the interior humidity is above 60%. This is the weirdest thing for me. I had already primed myself by previously looking into the efficacy of having these types of extractor fans fitted in our UK homes. 

       'The average outside humidity level in the UK is 67%.' I told her. 'Simply opening a window will cost you money.' That is almost true in Summer.

       'They are constantly on.' she despairingly replied. Well, they would be, Anyone with any sense opens their windows first thing in the morning and in the mid evening to let the cool air in. Right now at 07:29 am, the outside humidity level where I live is 72%. However, I should say that my windows have been open for hours now and the inside humidity level in my living room is only 54% and 4 degrees higher than outside. So, it is not as straightforward as I would like it to be to be able to make a strong point. However, I do know that de-humidifiers used to be really expensive to run. ScrewFix have one for £79.99 that uses 300 Watts per hour (a bit more than a large plasma television). It is programmable. The extractor fans Councils fit in their houses are a similar price. But here is the puzzling bit. A four inch (10cm) hole has to be made for each fan in the wall or ceiling of the home, which work is contracted out to a third party (expensive). I suspect that the cost of this might be close to the price of enough solar panels to charge an appropriate battery that would run a dehumidifier which does not need a huge hole in walls to run. The drawback, of course, is wholly within the scope of my rant. The person who buys a car for the prestige it imbues upon the owner is the same person, I suspect, who just wants to shunt warm air out along with moisture because they cannot lower themselves to manual work such as emptying the dehumidifier of water once it is full. Just like just shoving garden and kitchen waste into green bins is easier than providing a specific area in the garden for its decomposition, forgetting about humidity levels is desirable in the same way. 'Job done, I no longer have to think about it'.

       'Empty the water out? Perish the thought, dear!' For me though, that is water I would put on my plants. I would not feel guilty about that since I would have made the water myself. We should consider heat-waves and drought to be the new norm, I hear.

According to https://qualityindoorair.co.uk/how-much-water-should-a-dehumidifier-collect-in-a-day/ a small dehumidifier might collect between 4 and 9 litres of water a day. That in old money is about one to two GALLONS a day for watering tomato plants in a drought! The cost with no solar panels for me would currently be 300 Watts x 24 hours = 7.2 kW x £0.24 per unit = £1.72 + £0.50 standing charge = £2.22 per day. Plainly, I need to seriously think about getting solar panels.

So, are Councils pandering to a modern value that negates concern for the environment? Are they deliberately avoiding supplying efficient methods of reducing damp and mould in homes? We might need to understand that all landlords became directly responsible for damp and mould control in October 2025, and the Councils are still in catch-up mode. I cannot expect someone to have any inclination to come up with a good solution when any solution will do. 'It will do' is, after all, the modern way of doing things.

I think the black Jaguar I-pace in the drive means that guests are not expected to be told to 'mind the dehumidifier' when they go to the bathroom. It really is a status thing, isn't it?

Jaguar's 'Build your car' feature on their website plays on our desire to be in control while being creative. There are video and computer games that were quite successful that use this aspect of humanity, such as 'The Sims' and games that allowed interior home design. It is a modern fantasy-made-real scenario.

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

If I was a Despot

[3 minute read ] 

If I was a despot I could fix the country's problems. Here are some edicts:

       'Everyone must be weighed and if you are too heavy you must park your car half a mile from your home. If you still want to carry your favourite processed food you will get exercise with it!'

       'You can only use the water you carry from a mile away. Water for children will be delivered, half a litre per kilo of child.'

       'Everyone will get an interest-free £5,000 loan to start a business or contribute to a money-making scheme at the age of 21. You can pool the money with other entities. The most profitable new business in specified regions, each year, will be awarded £100,000 to use for outreach purposes, training and apprenticeships. The locals will be taxed to pay for this.'

       'Every week there will be a lottery to determine who must visit the local elderly person in their street. Teenagers will be exempt from this on the grounds of safety. £5 every week should be paid to a Christmas hamper fund for the benefit of elderly people, for exemption from the lottery.'

       'All tax-payers will contribute fifty pence per week to the RNLI.'

       'All able people over the age of 16 and under retirement age who do not work or are not in training shall be conscripted until such time as they find alternative work. Conscription shall be for a minimum of two years. Wages will not be paid. Payment shall be in the form of training across a wide field of activities and skills, from figure-skating and skiing to electronic and chemical engineering.'

       'All persons over the age of 11 years old will have a Binet-Stanford IQ test every ten years and career advice given accordingly.'

       'Cannabis shall be a class B drug and custodial sentences shall be given for a second offense.'

       'The national speed limit on motorways and dual carriageways shall be 50mph / 80 kph. The fuel savings from this adjustment shall pay for enforcing police coverage of our roads.

       'Points may be accrued for good neighbourly conduct which shall be redeemable against your annual tax bill.'

       'Every pound spent abroad must be matched by a similar amount paid to your local school or college in your town or city.'

       'Maypole dancing in villages shall be compulsory.'

       'Long Skipping ropes will be provided to be shared by every twenty homes. A skipping rope monitor shall be elected for each rope.'

       'No powered tool or apparatus shall be used on Sundays.'

       'Leaders of political parties must be elected by the public from a shortlist of candidates formed by the party politicians.The only people eligible to vote shall be those who voted for a politician of the appropriate party, even if that candidate was not elected in a General Election or By-election.'

       'Utility businesses shall be nationalised and prices made uniform across the country.'

       'Under sixteens shall be financially rewarded for reporting previously unreported potholes. Creating potholes shall be punished by deletion of social media accounts and a custodial sentence for one parent or grandparent of the perpetrator's choice.'

       'The sentence for Burglars, Robbers and thieves shall be increased to be a maximum of life imprisonment. Upon the arrest of thieves and burglars all their possessions shall be seized. Whenever a burglar or thief is given a custodial sentence one other non-violent prisoner who is not a thief shall be released on curfew, and compulsory training at a regional college or The Open University shall be undertaken. There will be a televised event wherein the convicted thief or burglar's possessions, including cars, properties, watches, jewellery, and banked money, shall be legally transferred to the newly released prisoner. Within two weeks the newly-released prisoner must donate either all the possessions or £1000 to a local youth or community group. They may sell some or all of the possessions to meet this mandate. If no qualification is achieved they shall be returned to prison and a different prisoner released in their stead. The prisoner to be released must personally thank the burglar or thief every day for a week prior to release and the televised event. Probation following their release will continue until the subject has been in full time employment for a full year following achievement of a relevant qualification.

       'New parents must attend parental training to achieve a strict standard of competence. Training shall continue in perpetuity until the standard is achieved. Assessments shall be conducted every five years and re-training administered where necessary.'

       'The only entities that shall be allowed to own more than one property for the purpose of residency shall be Councils.'

       'Private rents shall be capped across the nation commensurate with a value per square meter of available space, including cupboards.'

       'Anyone who says 'haitch' instead of 'aitch' shall be subject to a full year of education, which shall include British history, English, Celtic, Gaelic and Welsh grammar, dialect and regional accent training, and enforced extraction of Americanised words and spelling from their lexicon. Re-offending shall incur a further year of modern language training. Further recidivists shall be compelled to undertake singing lessons and must appear on Britains Got Talent for public pillorying.'

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Standing in the sun for too long

[2 minute read ] 

A funny thing happened to me in my local shop the other week. I was standing in the queue to be served but ever so slightly to one side because there is a coffee vending machine quite close to where customers are served at the counter. I was next to be served but when the customer in front left, a large man suddenly stepped forward and jumped the queue in front of me. 

       'Whoa! What yer doing?' I asked. 'I'm next'.

       'Well, you weren't in the queue.'

       'Yeah, I am. Get back. Just because you're a big man doesn't mean you get to push in.' I told him. He backed off but left a few items on the counter.

       'Here, take your items.' I growled, handing him a pasty, a roll and a tin of Coke.

While the shopkeeper attended to my order, I turned and stared at the big man.

       'Why are you staring at me?' he demanded.

       'You think you are more important than me, don't you?'

       'I am!' Ooops!

The customers in the queue drew up chairs and huddled to make bets. One of them opened a bottle of wine and another handed out packets of crisps. Someone dimmed the lights and turned a spotlight on us, and a young lad pulled a keyboard from his school bag and played discordant chords.

       'Why? Because of the colour of my skin?' At this point it is important to point out that my shopkeeper is Sri Lankan and is obviously brown. I also have brown skin. I knew that the big man thought I was a friend of the shopkeeper solely because of the colour of my skin, and he thought I was waiting to talk to him, probably in a foreign language, when the queue disappeared.

       'You're judging me by the colour of my skin', I continued, 'and you've assumed that the colour shows that I have an Asian heritage, right? But I can trace my ancestry for both parents back to the 13th century and all of my ancestors are Europeans. None are Scandinavian though. You're not racist, you are colourist. This is suntan!' You only have to look on the inside of my arms to see that I have white skin. I went on, 'You're pathetic. You think you are superior to someone with a suntan. Racist is bad enough but diminishing someone simply because they have a different skin colour is just plain madness. You're an idiot!

He didn't respond. I knew he wouldn't. Racism is initially based entirely on looks; skin colour. He had made a mistake jumping the queue and the reason he did it did not even fit the circumstances. Suddenly, the marker (skin colour) that allowed him to feel superior had dissolved right in front of him.

Instead, he turned to the person behind him and encouraged him to go ahead of him. 'Go ahead, I'm not in a hurry.' The customer declined his offer. Plainly, the big man was trying to claw back some dignity. I had already noticed that he was a workman or had stopped to buy his lunch from the shop. I always let workers on breaks go before me because they have a limited time to rest and scoff their food. If he had apologised for jumping the queue at the outset I would have just let him go ahead of me. However, I do not reward bad manners.

After I had paid for my purchases I turned to the big man now close behind me, stifled my amusement and said, 'Apologies. Apologies', and then held out my right hand forcing him to juggle his selection into one big paw so he could shake my hand. He was dumbfounded and reciprocated with, 'Sorry.' Lesson learnt.

He had caught me on a rough day. I almost never make waves and I certainly wasn't in a hurry. I just get fed up with people fumbling through life and here was a prime example of buffoonery that just 'got my goat'.

Memory used for nostalgia

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Nostalgia but not as you know it

[5 minute read ] 

Nostalgia, the preserve of old persons, and I suppose preservation is what nostalgia is. The preservation of a number of judiciously selected memories carefully and seamlessly stitched together, just the same way we join up episodes in an overnight dream.

'...and then I was falling off a cliff but a lion reached its paw out and grabbed me before I hit the ground...but it was okay because he was also running away from the rabbit swinging a tree branch at us, demanding more ice-cream.'

Well, that isn't nostalgia but in a dream it all makes sense to the person who dreamt it and some highly-paid charlatans who pretend to know what it all means. Nostalgia is, however, certainly made up of a collection of pieces of information, either real memories or snippets of information from a past that a person has a longing for We might include 'saudade', the Portuguese word for longing for something we feel we have lost but had never attained here. At least, that is how I read it to be. Confused? Nostalgic for the past? Nostalgic for the Victorian days or the 1950s or some time that the individual never existed in? We might be not understanding this unless the highly paid charlatan pipes up with, 'The rabbit is you from a previous life chasing the greed of today from a position of poverty, which is why the rabbit is shoe-less and carries only a branch and not a key!'

This, so far is meant to be somewhat non-sensical because it carries with it the idea that the memory of our past is both subjectively personal to only each of us and unreliable. Just like witnesses to the same crime or event but from different geographical and biased perspectives we will describe the scene differently. All my family members (parents and siblings) on any of our holidays decades ago will remember our holiday differently. My parents, my brother and I never noticed the good-looking boy my sister spied. My sister never experienced my joy of winning a few pennies in the amusement arcade, and we children never realised our parents left us alone to go out and have a few drinks once we were asleep. None of us could describe the same scene and have more than a few aspects of those days match in our narrations. Of course, there is a common thread throughout but markedly different values are placed on different events. Oh, by the way, it never, ever rained when I was a child but it always snowed in Winter and my socks always dipped own inside my wellies when my sister and I went carol-singing.

The truth is that, like everyone else, I use selective memory to colour my past. Almost none of my fond memories actually happened on a day that started out as fantastic, had no negative issues and finished as me being the winner. Let's face it, as a child, I had quarreling parents, a bullying brother and a sister that always said, 'Are we there yet?' after about twenty minutes of going anywhere. She also got car-sick; at least I remember that she thought she was. My dad told her that cars have a chain underneath that hits the road and stops people feeling ill and she never complained about feeling ill again. My father knew about static electricity.

But, how about this? How about other people can change our recollection of what happened simply because they have enough information to convince us that they were there? Sound like a story? It is! I have already written it and it has been read and recorded as my own work. Yet, I cannot copyright such a story because it is factual in everyone's life. Take for example, a parent who, listening to us recount one of our favourite childhood experiences, adds information to the tale such as background or a sub-plot; a sub-plot that we must inherently be unaware of since we were engaged in a different aspect of the event. I remember my mum bringing one of our goat-kids into my primary-school class. As far as I remember the kid only came into my school classroom. Apparently, it visited the whole school and wee-ed on the headmaster's office floor. I am, however, not nostalgic for that day or those innocent days. The other children in my class may remember me as being aloof and uninterested. The boys may have taken my lead and not coo-ed over the cute, white fluffy creature. Indeed, my actions may very well have been such that those boys I influenced on that day means they did not form a memory that they wanted to keep. They didn't know that I was already familiar with our animals at home. Obviously, my memory of my mum with a white goat-kid entering my classroom is enhanced by her telling of what the kid did in the headmaster's office and the knowledge that the whole school saw the kid. I have, just now, also attached an image of my mum leading the goat-kid through the village from our home to our school. If this was a nostalgic memory it is no longer the original one and must indeed be a living one; still open for further tweaking and re-interpretation, quite simply because with a jaded eye I added the journey the kid made from my home to the school and back. I suspect it would remember that day sadly because it probably just wanted to gambol in our garden and eat the long grass near its own mum. But, its life was not going to be one out of a 'Babe' film or movie.

We might, as I mentioned, be nostalgic for a past time; a time when we were not even born. We must be in possession of information that pertains to that time, yet we also carry with us in those nostalgic journeys information of our modern existence. How wonderful it would have been to live in the Victorian times, except they had no welfare state and worked six and seven days a week. Television films and dramas show us a tiny tranche of how life was and the ugly bits are hidden. How wonderful the 1960s and 1970s were in France, the UK and America-land, but not in Nigeria, Israel or Vietnam in 1967. 'Fortunate Son' by Creedence Clearwater Revival, now heard as a background sound to the Vietnam war gives us a opportunity to think that it was a good lark, a romp, or a jolly good show that was had with some dope-smoking mates. I can't say it wasn't because I have to rely on accounts from people who were actually there with their personal experiences; who obviously had a different time from the strategists of their day and the historians of today. The 'picture' will always be incomplete; always a story and never a true account, not least because the people on the ground only bring forward selected memories.

I propose that if we can be nostalgic for the past (one we never experienced ourselves), theoretically, we should be able to be nostalgic for the future, any future. I propose that just like the past which is a patchwork of selected memories and supposedly hard facts, any number of futures can be imagined and all are equally true. Wait! What? Am I saying that understanding the past relies on imagination? Yes, I am. Someone studying at Cambridge University told me that they had been told by a tutor that because so little is known about the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings, whenever an artifact that related to that time is unearthed they have to make up stuff in order to be able to include its relevance in an ongoing story of that time. I suppose they hypothesise in the positive form and wait for someone to test in the negative form to prove them right.

Anyway - back to nostalgic for 'the future'. I suppose that any movie franchise such as Star Wars or even Star Trek not only creates a hankering for a similar experience but also provides scope for a nostalgia of the same. Yet, that is not really the future, because everything we experience instantly becomes the past so we are really only wanting to refresh our past with another Star Wars movie. No, I mean we need technology to actually boost us into the future, notwithstanding that we would need to move across space to where the galaxy, solar system and Earth would be in the future. Fantasists who want to live like hobbits or kill dragons with swords and magic plainly need to be acquainted with witches, wizards, and spirits in the here and now to actually experience their nostalgic vibe. Yet, I go back to the idea that if we can be nostalgic for a past we must theoretically be able to pine for its reciprocal, the future and variations of an alternative life. Just Saying.

There is one aspect of nostalgia that we shouldn't overlook. Memories made in our childhood are the strongest ones that we retain. New experiences provide the greatest impact on our lives. Of course, if we are to survive we must sear into our minds, events, experiences and solutions that provide escape from danger, at a very early age, so it is natural for us to feel nostalgic about our childhood or other people. Apparently, this tendency to firmly stamp episodes into our memory fades after the age of thirty.

I had the distinct pleasure of writing a piece on nostalgia as part of my studies. It is not difficult to start an account and 'storify' it with lyrical description. It is not difficult to set moods and show the character's emotions. It is entirely natural to write the account in a chronological order. The difficulty lies in making sure the reader is not confused when the piece does not follow conventions, and let's face it, the 'White Swan' of iteration. If we only ever see white swans we come to believe that all swans are white through iteration. Time and time again, when we read a nostalgic account we are told what to understand. In its basic form: 'I remember when...Those were the days!' Or, more interestingly at the beginning of a story: 'Life on the beach in 1965 with Laura changed when Kiki arrived.' When the formula for recounting events, that are given as nostalgia, is cast aside to make room for an understanding of how memory actually works the reader can be confused. Putting a time machine into a story on nostalgia just trashes people's sensitivities. Questions might be asked why the typical chronological order of lyrical descriptions is interrupted by shifting perspectives. If, for example, I have a remit to write two thousand words prose on nostalgia, I am not going to write about the last holiday I spent with my grandparents, even if they did get washed away by the tide that summer. I am not going to dwell in a fractured and patched up past that is in my memory, that has been augmented with background stories, and pretend it actually occurred any more than I am likely to write about how my memory is corrupted by my biases, including the ones I don't know about. Grandma and Grandpa may well have arrived in France on a rubber dinghy and never made it home to England and all I gave them was a mournful wave, but there is no fun in the writing of it. Prose just means include lyrical description and avoid using meter to me. The sky was the limit. Unfortunately, my readers are on the ground. Even climbing a tree for a different viewpoint might be awkward for them. Of course, it is for the writer to provide a ladder for the reader to climb; or for the really stubborn, slovenly, or the reader trapped in a world of 'white swans', an armchair on a raised platform on a forklift.

Bird

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Bird

[3 minute read ] 

Bird

I think I have worked it out. Animals really do work around us humans. We might find YouTube videos that have titles such as 'When Animals asked for Help' and think 'Yeah Right' with a great deal of skepticism, yet, I keep coming across instances when animals seem to exhibit an intelligence that I just would not expect from creatures, that, let me be honest, are just animals with low Binet-Stanford testing IQs

Let me be clear. I could not thrive in the same circumstances as most animals. Certainly, I cannot see insects that are good food-stuff for me if I was a bird or bat, or even as a human. I think, from my quite limited scope of how people actually live and survive that there are a lot of people who know which insects to eat and which ones to leave well alone. I am thinking of African and Asian cultures. Wow! Good for them! I know I live in a temperate zone in which the greatest empires have hatched and I am supported in my thinking by many ideas that it is the same environment that allows a continuance of purpose to exist due to the good child survival rate in my temperate zone. But that is history; easily said. It is also sociology and politics. Those two I am not 'au fait' with in sufficient depth to invite.

I hope that the coal-tit that found itself in my bedroom some weeks ago is the very same one that is feeding its young not four feet from my living room window. I don't know that, of course, because it has not announced itself such as it might in an old Disney animated film. However, I can't help but think when a coal-tit didn't panic while I moved around my bedroom to find good solutions for its exit when it was the wrong side of a window that it is the same one; stand here and here and then go to the window and then stand here and so on, and when to make a vocal sound. It, I deeply felt, knew I meant it no harm. I was for a few seconds in a position to catch it in my left hand; I didn't. It knew I wouldn't.

What purpose could humans have for a small bird? And why would it nest so close to my window in the ivy that clings to my wall? There are jackdaws living in the area and like, I suppose, most corvids they are both clever and mean. I am not sure that I want to glue those two traits together such as clever and alive equals mean, but there are a lot of pigeons flying into windows in my neighbourhood and we know they're not mean. Just saying. If a Disney cartoon coal-tit was looking for a good place to nest in my bedroom and decided that maybe the windows might be shut sometimes (which was evident because I had to open a second one to let it out) then it might decide to nest close to humans because jackdaws being geniuses in the local bird environment recognise that humans have superior intelligence (not that I am sure that is so. I think it is intelligence adapted to an environment we have created). The jackdaws, let's be honest, are the nightmare neighbours, but even they know when they are targeted; just not yet. They stay safely at a good distance from possible attack.

I don't hear the coal-tit chicks anymore. I am certain they could not have flown the nest, so they have either been eaten or the parents have persuaded them to be quiet when food arrives. I wonder how that conversation went. Do chicks naturally decide to hide? Chicken and duck chicks are really quite evident but they do have a lot of siblings that could be else plucked from the ground.

I should like to think that I have a good working relationship with animals and tiny creatures and they have an intelligence that allows them to adapt to human activity in ways that I admire and aspire to. I can't really convince myself that they go home to their families and complain about the humans and what they have done. They, I am certain, just get on with living; living in a harsh environment. But like Snow White in the 1937 Disney animated film 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' (which is apparently based on an 1812 fairy-tale) I fantastically place myself as being a part of the coal-tit's life.

       'Should I talk with the window open?'

       'Why wouldn't you?'

       'The chicks might get used to human voices and think they are safe when they hear them.'

       'Is that a bad thing? We don't eat larks tongue soup anymore.'

       'I know. And I recognise that Sally, next door, provides food and water for the local birds and they might trust humans to provide a food-source.'

       'Pigeons think that Sally provides waste and an opportunity for a free meal. Small birds think Sally provides a constant source of food that can sustain them while they collect softer food in the wild. I might add that the Jackdaws are predatory free-loaders.'

Stairwell Wit

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Stairwell Wit

[2 minute read ] 

If anyone is like me they will have hundreds of files that are now hidden from easy discovery on their laptops or computers. I do the computer 'housework' every year or so, creating folders and moving files into them, saving back-ups to flash-drives and so on. But for some paranoid reason I need to back-up the flashdrives to the same hard disk drive where most of the files were originally collected. But now I have new folders called 128Gb or 64Gb that have the same files in them as the 'Documents' folders on the laptop. It is quite difficult for me to delete files because I know that files can mysteriously deteriorate and become unreadable. I know how this happens too and it is not just about the integrity of the storage device. When files were stored to Rewritable CDs and DVDs the integrity of the material was an issue, and sections of the disk subsurfaces sometimes deteriorated. This meant completely losing the portions of files that were saved there. If this included the meta-data the files were permanently gone, except I suppose to superior experts in file-recovery like Government agencies.

After careful sifting of hard drives and solid state storage devices. such as flash-drives, last night, I found what I have been seeking for months now.

I have known for a long time that there is a word (actually a phrase) for thinking of a retort in a conversation after we have left the conversation and moved away from the person to whom we would have directed it. I suppose I might have used an AI search system to find it online but I know that I never want to do that! A thorough search on my lap tops and flash drives last night revealed the French phrase, 'L'esprit de l'escalier' (Literally 'stairwell wit') I am assured. Last night I was excited to find it, yet this morning I realise that I can never probably actually say 'stairwell wit' to someone as a shortcut to mean I only thought of something to say after I had left, with any strong belief that that know what I mean. On well! I am usually pleasantly surprised by people though.

That expression is in a list of 37 words and phrases from around the world which I must have copied form a website. A German word, 'Packesel' is given as being someone who is stuck carrying everyone else's bags. A great notion in developing a character in fiction, I think.

The Danes have a word, 'Kaelling' for a woman that stands on her doorstep, or in a supermarket queue, or in the park, yelling at her children. Google Translate pronounces it as 'Kaling' in English. However, it seems to be in the English language because the Cambridge Dictionary (online) has the definitions, 'hag' and 'cow' for this word, and Google translate thinks it is in the English language too. So, why are Kaellings called Karens?

'Layogenic' could easily fit into my vocabulary or written lexis. It is supposedly a Tagalog word which means everything looks fine from a distance but up close it is a big old mess. Apparently, from my un-referenced pages, Cher, played by Alicia Silverstone, in Clueless, described someone as a full-on Monet ... from far away...

From Wikipedia: 'Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by the ethnic Tagalog people, who make up a quarter of the population of the Philippines, and as a second language by the majority. Its standardized and codified form, Filipino, is the national language of the Philippines.'

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[ 5 minute read ]

       mild humour 

I just had to mess it up

Good Crikeyness! I can be a real monster of disruption. Maybe that should read, I am a monster of disruption.

It was pretty windy yesterday, and I went to the Post Office shop. All the customers who subsequently came into the shop expressed their view on the weather. We are British; it is imperative that we make such comments. I suspect that when we all one day live in an eco-dome that is climate-controlled we will cease to be British.

       ‘Phew! That is windy out there!’ cried one woman as she came in.

Stupid me, like a goofy March hare, returned, “Good sailing weather.” You can almost hear me following it up with the cartoon-like "Uh huh, uh huh!", and "Sailing!", as I fervently nod, manically grinning

I just can’t keep my mouth shut. I have too much nervous energy. The conversation should have been something like “Windy isn’t it?” “Yes, it blew my tree down” or something. Anything that people can relate to. Not me, though. I am different.

Another woman came in. “Uh!” She brushed her hair from her face with one hand.

       ‘Good kite flying weather!’ She gave me a blank look, so I continued with, “We would need rope instead of string though!” My sunny disposition isn’t really as much fun as I would like to believe. Nobody answered. They looked away.

I gave way to a woman carrying only a litre of milk because I had two transactions to make which I knew would take a few minutes. She thanked me. Big mistake.

       ‘Well, I thought maybe you might need your morning coffee to wake up.’ Thinking about it about a few seconds later I realised I had just inferred that she was dozy or wobbly in some way. Who knows how she might take it. "Shut up, Martin!" I silently shouted at myself. She, however, bore it quite well, and responded admirably.

       ‘The wind has woken me up.’

I tried to give way to another customer but she had her own plan. I suspect the shopkeeper was in on it. My transaction did take a while and he seemed embarrassed that the new technology was stymieing his efforts to be quick. He wanly smiled at me a few times.

       ‘New technology.’

       ‘I know.,’ I said, ‘It is the young folk who have to prove their worth by inventing stuff other people find awkward to use.’ I relentlessly went on to explain, "Maybe that is a bit cynical, but A.I. should be able to recognise what needs to be done, and only a monetary value should be entered." I offered.

Reality can jump up and smack us in the face. He was embarrassed for me. He wanted me out of his shop as quickly as possible. He knew that we had, had a similar exchange on technology and A.I. a couple of weeks earlier. He just wanted me to stop harassing his customers. His anguish was palpable.

However, I was using a shortened version of conversation that should only be used in exceptional circumstances. Somehow, I had egregiously conflated polite and safe greetings with actual conversation. The distinction between the two, for me, was entirely missing. That mistake was further heightened because I recognised that time for a conversation was extremely limited; a couple of minutes at best (or enduringly long for the other customers if I am in the same shop as them).

There is something in what I said about the relentless production of new devices. If a device works and does a job exceptionally well, in my mind, there should not be a replacement. However, designers would lose their jobs; “Sorry, there simply is no space for innovation these days – everything works fine. We are not hiring. In fact, we are laying people off.” STEM undergraduates would have nothing to do. Essentially, they would become history students. In my happy world, they would become kite designers, hopefully. 

I used to own a 26ft ( almost 8 metres ) sailing boat, and taught myself to sail in a 17ft ( almost 5.2 metres ) sloop off the Essex coast. Almost drowned a few times. Completely irresponsible but what a rush! While mucking about trying to work out what the anchor was for, I noticed a car-sized catamaran with two men on it; one on a trapeze. It practically took off in the smallest gust. They were experienced sailors. “Gust in five, four, three, two, one.” One of the hulls lifted from the water and they shot off. My near drowning fun was nothing compared to my imagination of what they were experiencing. I was jealous. I suppose I transpose that remembered imagination onto my conversation and because I am living it in my mind I weirdly expect others to be able to see the video in my mind. That kind of inter-connectivity we do not have. Why do I think otherwise? Why would I want it? Telepathy? Do I actually believe in it? Of course, I must do. Reality slaps me around the head with a wet fish and tells me that I am seeking someone with similar experiences, a bit like being in a doctor’s waiting room and turning to another person and saying, ‘My knee hurts’ and hoping they say something like, ‘My arm hurts.’ I want to hear about someone’s agony. And then like Sybil in ‘Fawlty Towers’, I can say, “I know.... I know.... I know...”.

In truth, none of that conversation took place, but it could have. This is what really happened:

I was in the Post Office shop waiting in line behind someone buying a newspaper. A woman entered.

       ‘Phew! That is windy out there!’

       ‘It is!’ I replied. I love those two words together. You can put great emphasis on them and even draw them out. She went to find what she needed. Another woman carrying a litre of milk arrived from the back, just before I was about to be served, and I gave way to her.

       ‘I have a couple of transactions that might take some time. Please go ahead of me.’ She thanked me, paid for the milk, and left.

The shopkeeper tended to my needs and apologised for the delay in completing the transactions.

       ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry.’

When it was all done. I cried, "Woo Hoo! I can update my spreadsheet now!" The queuing customers who had been patient and only mildly interested, all simultaneously looked at the floor. I noticed a couple had raised eyebrows.

I just had to mess it up.

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Smug Tortoise Tired Hare

[3 minute read ] 

I can't work out if the wind plays in my garden or badgers and muntjac. Sometimes plant pots are scattered across the garden; definitely not a lawn, a garden. I don't do manicured. I would be delighted if animals are using my garden to romp and tumble and even drink from the bucket of water with mosquito larvae in it, or from the broken plastic storage box half-filled with green algae-ridden water. The gloopiness of this water is a bit much I think, even for a thirsty brock. 

I know muntjac deer get in my garden; they leave tell-tales in Winter when food is scarce. The strawberry plants are lifted from the near-frozen ground and the Euonymus shrubs get eaten as far up as a small deer can reach. They also leave little pellets that resemble what a rabbit might leave after it has finished digesting food. I feel for them, they are hungry at a time when there is not much for them to eat. What can you do? Attract the local population of mammals by leaving out buckets of food? Not on your Nelly? Whereas generosity for most people stops at their front door, for me it stops at my back garden gate. The front of my home is different.

On the pavement outside my home is where the polite people move. They cautiously nod but most of the time they try not to say, 'Good Morning'. Social protocol, which is something I hated as a teenager largely because I didn't understand it, compels these reluctant persons to answer a cheery greeting, but their tiny glance that slips through their armour gives credence to a supposition that they have already noticed someone else in their immediate vicinity. They are not surprised by the presence of another person; they do not even need to check or examine the aspect or visage of the person to know who it is. They have already decided to ignore something, but they can't. They cannot help but glance. If they do not at least acknowledge the cheery person they outwardly show their contempt. That is where their politeness is. That is where the generosity ends. An hierarchy of existence has formed in their heads. One that I suspect is instinctive but I know is also fashioned, though not deliberately; it is certainly unfettered and not at all considered. 

If they see a tramp, which is the romantic form of a homeless person, they stop their dogs from sniffing nearby and hurry on. Their breakfast of filtered coffee and bacon and eggs is safe in their bellies and they are sated. Not experiencing need in the moment they have no compassion for others. 'I'm alright, Jack!' So, you must be too. Sadly, the dog aggressively pulled away from the scene has a better understanding of things and doesn't judge the fallen people to be any different to the ivory-tower dwellers pulling at the end of their leashes. They are pleased to meet people and, after all, a tail-wag is free.

People don't like outliers. They don't like things that are not average. They have animals as pets but they don't understand animals. They like things that are marketed as safe and reliable, even if realistically, they are inherently not safe. They like to imagine having an exciting life but, I suspect, they wouldn't like to live it. It takes a lot of effort to be interesting and average people tend to seek average activities. Selling their houses to buy a yacht to sail the world as a sea-gypsy is just not on the cards. Anyone who has done that and then come back is not someone they can stand. Their conversation is different; it comes from a different perspective, from a deeper understanding of fear, joy, relief and what it is to really succeed; to survive against tremendous odds through the use of personal skills, attributes and characteristics. 

It doesn't matter if someone has climbed a mountain or swam the English Channel if they are out of shape today. The race is still being run and the slim man or woman who has done nothing is the tortoise compared to the hare. Ultimately, they believe they have won. Smug tortoises fail to see tired hares.

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Morose

[3 minute read ] 

At 4am today, I was awoken by my alarm clock. I think it is supposed to sound authoritative and stern or something, much like a sensible person with all their plans for the day already drawn up, but to me it sometimes seems cynical. It has a morose tone about it that hints at the repetitive nature of a series of days, months and years that have passed and will be played out again in the future. 

Fortunately, the world around me doesn't agree with it. There is a nest of chicks, in the ivy, right outside my bedroom window. When I say right outside I mean four feet, or just over a metre, from my window. I suspected that there was one nearby because I kept hearing a bird alarm call, which I suspected was a shout at the other birds, namely jackdaws, to stay away. Sure enough, a coal-tit flits back and forth to be greeted by a chorus of cheeps. That hungry group is the second thing I heard today. I was surprised at how quickly their sound is deepening as they grow. 

My alarm clock says, 'Wake up, there are important and mundane things to do today.' The young birds say, 'This is just the beginning of an adventure', and the parent looks at me and says, 'Keep away.' I am fairly certain that it knows I am not a threat, just like most birds know that people on bicycles are different to people who are not on bicycles. I think it is jerky movement that tells them there is a hazard to their lives.

Erratic and haphazard actions alarm most of us. If we notice a series of stops and starts, I think we get a little anxious. There seems to need to be a rhythm in my life that is sometimes absent and I start thinking, 'What's wrong?' Don't get me wrong; I am not seeking a banal and obscure existence in the recesses of society. Not for me to just walk to the village shop with my body on the lane and my head in a phone. Oh no, I kick myself down the lane irritated because I allowed my childhood myopia to be an obstacle to learning about the natural world around me. Lucky me to live in a village, eh? I have lived in cities across Western Europe as well and the vibrancy of those is incredibly stimulating. I regard Munich (München) as my second home. I think there is always a freshness to living in a city that is in a country that is not the country in which we went to school.

I am going to change my alarm clock and get one that sounds a bit more hopeful. 'Boop, boop, boop' needs to be 'Beep, beep, beep'. I don't want a responsible adult telling me to get up and wash behind my ears. I want an hedonistic hippy to wake me, saying, 'We might all get on a magic bus today and go to Greece, Coming?'

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

My Publishing House

[4 minute read ] 

In the city library a few days ago, I fell into a conversation with a seated librarian behind her desk. When I say 'fell' I mean I engineered it by looking at her as I approached. And, when I say 'conversation' I mean she asked questions and I answered.

       'Can I help you?' she smiled at me.

       'Yes. I am looking for a book on publishing.' I thought that was specific enough but after a minute or two her creased brow was matched by her exasperated, 'It would help if you could be a little more specific!'

       'Ah! Yes. I see. There is a big gap in the book publishing world. There is vanity publishing at one end and the huge multi-national publishers at the other end; you know the ones who own every other smaller publishing house.'

       'The big four.' she satisfyingly smiled.

       'Tesco, Asda....Are we talking about supermarkets now?' I hoped it was amusing, but really I wanted, as usual, to show off a little, and bizarre is my style.

She smiled that same smile that meant she had been dealing with the weak public for a long time. I suppose to her, I had just interjected an 'ad' into a quite dull YouTube video. I pressed the 'Skip' button for her, and moved on.

      'I am interested in, perhaps, opening a very tiny publishers of books and such-like, and really have no clue about the industry, so I was wondering if you have a book on publishing that might give me an insight.'

     '705' She didn't leave it there though. She wasn't rude. She didn't say it tiredly. 'They are a monopoly.' I didn't let it go. 'They', 'Big Four' and 'monopoly' just didn't square with me because I knew I know the actual word for a group of controlling influencers in a market.

       'Not a monopoly, is it? There's an actual word for it, but it escapes me right now.' I blurted.

She looked at me tiredly, but with some compassion.  I could see her think, 'So what? Is it that important to you to correct me? And trying to be comedic in the first instance too?'

She told me where to go. You wish! No, she directed me towards the right place. The nearest shelf to where we were sitting, though still twenty to thirty metres away (60 - 90 feet). I walked the whole of the rest of the library floor, looking, and then worked my way back towards the desk looking for 705. I got lost twice and ended up in the Cookery section and then the Pregnancy section.

You should remember that I had been drinking the 'orange squash' with its mind-altering sweeteners in them, so it wasn't my  confusion I was carrying; it was the confusion of the chemistry and psychiatric world that set my thoughts into turbulence at that time. I got home with books I neither needed, nor had time to read, but only a single book on publishing; a book published in 2000! How relevant is a book that old? It has to have something in it, right? Time will tell, but I have to have an open mind and prepare to freely extrapolate from it to loosely compare ideas to modern practices; modern practice I have yet to read about or discover. I need to remember what could now be obsolete.

It often takes a great deal of effort to get even the tiniest piece of work done, or gain the key statement in a book before we can actually set about making progress. I call the 'key' statement, 'the 1% that I must seek'. It is the crucial piece that holds everything together, the 'king-pin'. So, I shall have to read the entire ?outdated? book on publishing, just in case I learn something that allows me to learn something elsewhere at a later time. 

       'More wine, sir?'

       'No. Thank you, Jeeves. I shall need a clear head for a period.'

       'Very good sir.'

       'Oh, one more thing, Jeeves. Re-instate the pastry-chef, would you? This might take a while.'

Jeeves cocked an eyebrow but I didn't elaborate. 'Very good sir'. He left but not before he poked the fire a little, which sent exciting crackles into the air. The book is not that good, I thought.

Reality struck, last night, when I spluttered a dead fly out of my mouth along with the last dregs of cold and rancidly-cheap coffee I had swigged from my mug. Hmmm. Things were different when things were different in the past. I could not help but think of my father showing me how to make a 'weasel', 'pop' with a tin of Tate and Lyles Golden Syrup. Of course, all he did was turn the tin upside-down and then after a few seconds turn it right-side-up and open the lid. The empty air space that had temporarily been at the bottom of the tin rose through the syrup and 'popped' across the whole of the contents of the tin. It isn't really 'pop goes the weasel' because that  is an old dish much in the same socio-economic category as bread and dripping, I think. It has half a pound of tuppenny rice and half a pound of treacle in it, anyway.

Just like the 'pop' or the 'weasel' my head was feeling treacley and glutinous and everything inside was slipping, but not at all like the beauty of Picasso's 'Persistence of Memory' with the melting clock. Time had passed, but nothing had 'stuck' except what most of us would throw away with the empty Golden Syrup tin; the sticky syrup that stubbornly lines the inside and no spoon will shift. That persistence would get washed away and my mind would again be an empty receptacle, but, you know what? I didn't just sit and stare into mid-space and make stuff up, like I normally do. Fantasy is great if you can afford to be poor in coin, but rich in mind, I always say. Well, if I remember it, I will from now on...to myself, of course, maybe; because that maxim is not really that good, is it? But, it's a start.

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Who's Counting?

[6 minute read ] 

A few days ago, I had an online conversation on Economics. Someone wanted to know 'the best way to study GCSE Economics'. What kind of question is that? The best way? Is it reading a book on economics while standing in a pool of custard? What? 

The message was SmartPhone-text-message short. The level of qualification discussed was, well, low. And, the questioner was using a student-rich website. Hmmm. Young person or not? Not young enough to be at school, otherwise the best way to study GCSE Economics is to attend school and pay attention. No, I decided; the questioner was thwarted from studying A Level Economics by not meeting the minimum entry requirements of having a GCSE in the appropriate subject, Economics. My online answer was a suggestion that mentioned that some focus on assessing their maths ability would be a good start and I included a link straight to a GCSE Economics course for less than £500 on the Reed Courses website.

I am so stupid. Inevitably, there was a second answer to the question, and this one was definitely from a young person, 'Lol martin is a funny guy...no maths at GCSE...hardly any at A level'. I have had an A2 level Economics book right on my floor beside me for the past three weeks or so. It gathers dust but I sometimes need an offline clue to how my world works, so there it lies. This second response to the question went on, although, typically, it was a text-message-long post; '...watch YouTube videos and take notes.' Fair point; it works for some. Yet, maybe reading a GCSE book might be better or get tuition in an educational setting is the best. It seems subjective.

However, to me, the questioner had a specific focus, that I thought I might have more than a glimpse of. I felt that the questioner wanted more than an A level in Economics qualification; a qualification that can only be attained by first meeting all the entry requirements. I, myself, had considered doing that A level, which today, online, costs £495 as a regulated EDEXCEL course on Reed Courses. For many of us that amount is something we might consider fair to get that qualification but from scratch, no GCSE beforehand, it would be almost £1000; a bit strong for the same 'many'. It always was for me, anyway. I ended up with a knowledge of 'pop' economics to help my business. And here is why I suggested to the questioner that they might first consider having a look at their own maths ability. 

At A level Economics there appears to be a bewildering absence of maths, at least in my OCR A2 Economics book, which was attested to by the second answer to the original question of how best to study GCSE Economics, written by the person who openly mocked me for even suggesting there is any at all, even at A level.....because he had just done A Level Economics. Oh Dear! I thought.

I have run a business with the help of Economics and I think Econometrics, quite simply because Arts and Crafts doesn't have enough numbers in it as a subject! My book on Houseplants just won't tell me what price range I should adopt; when, how or why. Of course, anyone with an A level in Economics would have the answers to my business success, straightaway. Won't they? Well, I think they should at least have an idea.

Here is what I included in my post, which although wasn't directly aimed at the A Level Economics student hoping for his results this month, did have him in mind: 

'I have used 'pop' economics in my business for determining prices and in marketing strategies in ways that I feel have necessitated understanding both Econometrics and Economic Modelling. 'There may be a linear equation for a linear demand curve, and a quadratic equation for the average cost curve. For example, you may have a linear equation (y = mx+c) for the linear demand curve, and a quadratic equation (y = ax^2+bx+c) for the average cost curve. Through the mathematical interaction of these equations, we derive Economic theory, such as how the market equilibrium is where demand meets supply.' (Qurious Education, 2026).'

And added: 'Perhaps, there are more questions answered for a larger group of inquisitive people than are posted by a single individual, if answers include information that is applicable to different life choices.' 

This was really me at my worst because I was affronted by his youthful confidence that he knew best because he had 'been' and well, he just 'is'. This was obvious because he had already scorned my 'overlong' post. I have a laptop though. My best time is between 4am and 6am and my only recent online presence had been only at around 1am and 3am immediately before preparing for bed, instead of after sleeping. I was not rested.

No-one needs to understand what any of that means unless you know that 'demand; average cost; and, market equilibrium' are all terms taught in A level Economics. Every A level Economics exam-ready student completely understands what they are, don't they? Don't They?

I gave the appropriate reference at the end of my post that matched the in-line citation, which is a website. The A level student made another post that again noted that my post is overlong and I don't know anything about the original questioner and 'there is very little need for all you wrote'. He also asked which book told me what I know about equations in Economics. 

At the bottom my post he was responding to I had included the reference as such:

Qurious Education (2026), 'How Much Maths is in Economics at University Level?' Available at:https://wearequrious.com/admissions/how-much-maths-in-economics-at-university/#Q3
Accessed: 23 June 2026

It was then, finally through the fug of night after relentless nights of poor sleep ( 3 or 4 hours only in 15 minute segments) that I realised what I had done. I was using logic and experience on a teenager! 

Now those last few words, are not to suggest that teenagers are not logical. It is the sum of the person that is crucial, I suggest. By dint of being a teenager, this person would have less experience of the world than I, an adult. I am an OU student and citing and referencing is something I am exposed to. In all probability, this teenager has not had to consider how what is said can be misconstrued by younger or less experienced minds. Just like my thirty-something neighbour who asked my why I give away perfectly good tomato plants, this teenager would, in all likelihood, have never yet stumbled upon the concept of giving away something of value in order for someone else to develop it, and derive something from their own efforts. The probability is, my adult neighbour sees only tomatoes as useful, not plants. Likewise, as a teenager, I saw only immediate gratification as a worthy goal. Also, when I was a teenager, I never bothered to back-track on my words to understand what I had said and compare it with what everyone else heard me say.

This teenager had never been told that maths is crucial in economics. It is all about numbers. How many people are there? How many people ate fish yesterday? What is the average income? How long does it take to get to York on a Bank Holiday Monday? How many fishing rods were sold at what price?

       'Hmmm...look at this Billy. Sometimes people buy our products and sometimes they don't.'

       'How do you know?'

       'Well, yesterday, I looked at the shelves in the warehouse and there was the same amount of things in there as there is today!'

       'Do you know? I think I saw that a while back, but there was more stuff for a while and then suddenly it was almost all gone!'

       'When? How much was there?'

       'Oh, we don't record the date, and we definitely don't use numbers here.'

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Not the call of the Yellowhammer

(A little bit of bread and no cheese)

[6 minute read ] 

Bread and Cheese

Sometimes, the world is just going along, without us noticing. I am always relieved (for me that is not thinking 'I could design this better') that the cheese I buy, when I cut slices from it, fits half a slice of bread (well almost). I have to be honest, I really don't want to notice the errors in the world, which are, inevitably, from human intervention.

I am definitely not one of those types that bang on about climate change or rain forests. I am vegetarian simply because I feel healthier; ruthlessly, the heath of animals, when it comes to my diet, really doesn't come into my eating decisions. I don't eat bear bile, for example. Mind you, I wouldn't eat a sandwich in front of a chimpanzee when I am numbly staring at it in a zoo. Here's a tip for eye-hunters: If you get approached by a person whom you might be tempted to get a room with, when you are in a zoo, never say, 'Why are these animals in prison? What did they all do?' I said this at London Zoo, and she went straight back to her boyfriend, whom she had escaped from for a few moments.

I buy my cheese from ALDI. That shop has changed a lot! It used to be that shoppers would walk along aisles of pallets of goods. Now, it is not much different to Tesco or Sainsbury's. I asked an employee why, and the reply was that shoppers had requested a better shopping experience. It pays to listen because ALDI replaced Morisson's as the fourth place in 'The Big Four' a couple of years ago, but you have to wonder why the shoppers were in the shop in the first place. The answer is, of course, because they want low prices; prices that are low because it takes less time to switch an empty pallet with a full one, than it does to put individual products on tidy shelves, which is why bags of sugar in ALDI is on a pallet (Clearly, we buy a lot of sugar in ALDI).

Putting products where customers could reach them used to be done by warehouse people; with the shop floor merely representing a 'Goods Out' portion of their warehouse. So, a portion of the supply chain; inventory (storage) has shifted to 'product placement': which term is actually used in the media to refer to people in films and on TV using a particular brand. By product placement I mean, placing a good on a supermarket shelf; so, the product in an ALDI store moved from 'Logistics and the Supply Chain' as a good to simply a 'product', from the average customers' point of view. The display and actual selling of a product is still part of the supply chain and logistics, however.

Supermarket products are often in rectangular shaped packaging, because they can be shipped in smaller boxes than the same amount of things like wine, beer, and spirits which individually are in round bottles. Cheese is no different for supermarkets. Even the tiny Boursin, which I used to buy as a short and fat cylinder, can be bought in a rectangular box; but this is because they stack better in the supermarket, and damage during shipping is vastly reduced;

       'Hurry up! Chuck the box!'.

A dropped box of Boursin without protective individual packaging would make all the little wheels move to one end of the shipping box, ruining almost every one of them because they are squashed. The same applies to dropping a box of spirits, except for 'Jim Beam', and 'Jack Daniels', and some others, which are, individually, in rectangular bottles. Yeah, I know! Physics told us that the circle or arc is the strongest design; or in Architecture, an arch is the best way to span an open distance, between two piers or pillars. Lintels just don't cut the mustard.

Why is it then, that cheap cheese in discount supermarkets is offered to a customer, that when it is cut, fits half a slice of bread. I had to think for a moment. Who is that cheese aimed at? That cheese gets no media advertising. It fits the size of sliced bread. It is cheap. Hmmm.

I used to eat packed lunches at school. My parents were not poor and I am tall.

       'Tall? What do you mean?'

My doctor, a few years ago, suddenly said to me, quite out of the blue, 'You're taller than your father, aren't you?' I replied that I am. The doctor qualified his blurted sentence with, 'That is because you ate better than him when you were children'.

Right. Think of a family with low income; two adults and three kids. Who, in that family, wouldn't be grateful for cheese that almost perfectly fits half a slice of bread, when they are making packed lunches for lunch in the morning? And, just think, what would you do with all the little trimming falling to the floor when you eat those sandwiches in public? Ignore them? In front of the monkeys?

Cheese that fits sliced bread is aimed at 'low food-budget' families and individuals, which is why it gets no advertising. Advertising a product affects that product's profitability, and the customer pays more for that product, not more for the other products in the store, which keeps that unadvertised product's price low. Consider 'Cathedral City' cheese, for example. It is advertised sometimes. It also doesn't fit sliced bread well. I suggest that people who buy 'Cathedral City' might also buy artisan bread, or non-sliced bread that isn't rectangular. You know, a Cob or something, or at least a round loaf.

Rectangular shapes sometimes trick us a bit in a weird way. I watched my young nephew try to cut a slice from an rectangular unsliced loaf of bread. The result was much as we might expect; thicker at the top or bottom than the other end, or the end closest or furthest to him. Most of us cut bread from top (the crusty side) to bottom, when we should really cut it from one side to the other (with the crusty side being a side not the top. If you cut it from the top, crusty bit, to the bottom, we should, occasionally lean over the bread to see the other  side as well as the nearest side of the bread to us, because otherwise the moment of cutting  is longer and there is more opportunity for error. Sliced bread in factories is done by machines, so it doesn't matter if time is not an issue; but the process is almost instantaneous in factories and only the length of the movement of the slicing might be a consideration because there is more wear that way.

I cut blocks of cheese that fit my bread by lying it flat with one of the widest sides facing up. It means that I need a linger knife. I do this, because, it is important to me to make sure the slices are even, because, I eat more cheese on toast than cheese sandwiches; Too thin or uneven slices means that either the toast burns in places under the grill or the cheese burns at one end and is unmelted at the other. However, I get a little cross at the greater effort I need to use to cut cheese this way.

It is a question of pressure; pounds per square inch, or maybe kilos per square metre. But my irritation is because my knives are just not very sharp. So, we may indeed understand why factories might slice bread from top to bottom, wear of machinery be damned. As the blades become blunt, a greater incidence of crushing the bread, while it is being cut, will occur. Yup, the blades wear, or get blunt, faster this way, but it is both cheaper and quicker to replace a short blade than a long one, and maintenance time is reduced, which means that the machine can make more cuts per minute. (When considered, there is the same amount of wear on lots of short blades to the equivalent length long blade). In real life, factories use a series of spinning blades to cut bread so it is moot anyway.

The world goes goes on doing things without us noticing, until it doesn't segue with our individual lifestyle.

By the way: Grated cheese tastes better than sliced blocks of cheese because more air gets to it. Don't bother putting it on toast; it will not be grated when it melts.

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

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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!'