daily straying

Movin' on

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:05:00 +0000

http://www.chasing-sheep.blogspot.com

Random blogage

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:09:00 +0000

Newsflash: Marshmallows don't flush.

Burniture is furniture for the bedroom.

There is a particularly useful kind of delicatessen, where you can buy nuts and bolts and fuse wire.

We have a milkman. (Is that a gender specific term?). He is about 85. Our semi-skimmed comes in glass bottles. He drives a little red van and he can't reverse. I fear Ms M will snaffle him in one of these days and adopt him.

The postman brings the papers. He says you can tell a lot about people from their post. Ms M says that all postmen (and women) have a secret identity. He is probably a ~~spy~~ ~~novelist~~ world record breaking unicyclist.

It is still possible in our village of 51 people to have a paper delivered on a Sunday. It is arranged through the post office 3 villages away, who used to run a Sunday paper service. A man from the next village past ours goes down sometime on Sunday morning and collects them from that post office. Then he leaves them under the carport of our postoffice. The far-away post office produces a bill monthly. This is paid at our post office, along with an extra 50p for each delivery. They give nice-man-in-next-village-up the 50ps and then pay our bill for us. Of course.

I don't have time for blogging. I am trying to write a book whilst simultaneously finishing a piece of software. 2 pieces. I am doing something very clever in a language I don't feel really comfortable in. It is like trying to argue philosophy in Italian, when really I only speak Spanish and did a bit of Latin at school.

I leave you with this ...

Ms M: I just don't think I have the energy to do a jigsaw ...

Apparently, I am a high-pressure jigsaw dooer. Some sort of "Hurry Up Driver" or something.

I'm sure there are worse things to be.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:49:00 +0000

'twas the night before Christmas and all through the house,

not a creature was stirring not even a mouse,

because Badger's cat Frank had enjoyed them for his tea,

which is what Ms M and her boy are teaching Badger and Stray to call dinner ...

---

Contrary to reports, it's not even slightly grim up north.

The move went ... well, actually the whole boxes bit was fine. BT of course pissed us about for week after week before finally admitting that they can't actually provide broadband in our village because we share 5 phone lines between 20 houses.

We were offline for a little while, and I held in mind the wonderful words of Douglas Adams:

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

We are now on broadband thanks to a huge satellite dish in our back garden (please phone to make a booking if you would like to borrow it for your alien landing).

The village is gorgeous. The weather ranges from swirling mist to inch-thick ice crunching under boot beneath bright blue skies. We have a river and waterfalls which are fed almost entirely by rain running off the hills. After 3 wet days the ford disappears, and after 3 dry days you can cross at almost any point. We haven't had a full thaw for a fortnight, and as the water level dropped away huge sheets of ice split and tipped, now pointing skywards. Proper ice sculptures.

The drive to the supermarket is 12 miles on a 'road' that only got promoted from the status of farm-track fairly recently. Older maps still show a dead end at the next village. I have forgotten what traffic is but now allow extra time for stubborn livestock in the middle of the road or a flock of sheep being moved from field to field. It takes 40 minutes round-trip to get a pint of milk, but I've yet to feel anything except really really really bloody lucky - people drive for miles to see this view of Pen-y-ghent:

I can't wait for people to visit me. I think Badger, Ms M and I may have lucked upon the most beautiful place in the world. Our neighbours have been really welcoming and I really do feel as though this is where I am meant to be, in all 4 dimensions.

To all who I owe emails, cards, phone calls, blog comments etc - please forgive me, I have been in a whirlwind of unpacking and DIY and catching up on work for neglected clients. My Orange phone has no reception at all in this valley so I'm currently moving to Vodafone. BT managed to cut off my main email address for a while because they'd moved it to the broadband service that they couldn't provide ... so if you've sent mail and not received a reply please do send again!

Hoping you're all as happy as I am this christmas ...

A meandering ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:50:00 +0000

I recently posted about this short exchange that I had with BT.

I am well beyond the end of my tether with them, after the 'Engineering Team' refused to install a new phone line into my new house 'because there is already one there'. I happened to already know that the 'phone line' already there is infact just an extension from a house next door. In essence my house has borrowed a couple of the unused wires out of their phone cable. This means that neither house has a line suitable for broadband ADSL.

I had (increasingly im-)patiently explained this to several 'customer ~~misinformation~~ service' representatives over the past few weeks. I explained that I didn't have time for them to activate and test the current line and then begin a new order from scratch.

In the end, they activated the line but they cancelled the broadband order because there was no line active at the precise moment earlier in the day when the line test was run. I rang them up, I was baffled yet again by the difficulties they seem to have in getting their systems to talk to each other (being a communications company and all that) and I started the broadband order again.

Sorry madam, I can't place that order - this line is a DAX line - it's not suitable for broadband.

I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, scream, swear or simply go to their offices with a weapon.

It was then explained to me that 'The Engineering Team' would need to do a 'Site survey' to establish the cost of installing a new line, which would then probably be passed on to me.

In theory BT have a flat rate of £107 for installing a new line. I did point out that I have ordered several new lines previously whilst living in London, and that the point of the flat rate is that the profit they made on doing those ten minute installations is supposed to ensure that rural communities aren't left without services, but I may as well have been explaining the exact meaning of the term 'attenuation'.

For the non-geeks, attenuation is the opposite of amplification. As the signal is transmitted through the system it becomes less strong and less clear. Whilst there is no doubt that BT's entire sales / orders / installations / service system is essentially one huge attenuator, it strikes me that this is a problem much more widely experienced in the UK.

I am working on a book at the moment about ... well, it's kind of hard to sum up here, but essentially it's a journey which takes in human biology, consciousness, anthropology, sociology, politics and the science of global warming. It seeks (rather ambitiously) to answer the question "Who are we, why have we screwed up the planet and what can we do about it?"

The book is the baby of an amazing Australian thinker who I am very very fortunate to be working with. In writing it, and making an interactive documentary, I am having to really examine my own beliefs to ensure they don't get in the way of the truth / facts / science.

In particular I am having to look again at my core reaction to the concept of Nuclear Power. It brings my hackles right up.

I have several negative responses to NP. Some of those are valid, if perhaps exaggerated or out-dated, concerns about safety. However, I have an additional and even stronger barrier which is proving to be really difficult to overcome.

I am scared that if I change my beliefs about Nuclear Power then I will not be acceptable to my peers, my friends, my family.

On a biological level, human beings are pretty useless on their own. We need others, need their love and approval as well as their tangible help and support. Our limbic system drives us to belong, to find people with whom we resonate, and shared "felt truths", such as "Nuclear Power is completely unacceptable" are the scaffolding we use to hold ourselves in place within the group.

And yet increasingly I am coming to wonder whether there is any alternative. It seems likely that in order to avoid either the catastrophic kind of climate change that will cause massive death and misery, or the escalation of tension over oil into the levels of war that will cause massive death and misery, we might have to consider how best to use Nuclear Power to generate energy that can meet the needs of every human being on the planet.

I am nervous writing this, and yet I know that were I writing in French I would be much less concerned. As a population France have accepted, and even embraced, Nuclear Power. As I began to look at the reasons why, I was drawn back to a paper I wrote when I was 19 about the challenges facing the UK as a result of a lack of scientific and engineering literacy within the population. (If you really wanted to you could order it here but it basically boils down to dumping the current education system which creates an arbitrary arts / science divide at 16 and adopting the international baccalaureate or similar).

To make informed decisions about issues such as Nuclear Power, we need a population who can comprehend and grapple with risk. To understand risk you need a sound relationship with numbers as expressed through statistics. We need an electorate who understand why it is ridiculous to sit in the crazy chair on Deal or No Deal and say 'Well, the quarter million hasn't been in box 17 for the last 54 shows, so I figure the chances it's in there have gotta be quite high'.

My dad and I regularly joke that it's quite safe for me to travel by any mode of transport because he has been in a serious train crash and an emergency landing of a plane.

So, how is NP acceptable in France when it is so feared and demonised in the UK? Obviously the French have a strong motivator, having no significant fossil fuel reserves of their own, but in addition general level of trust in and respect for scientists and engineers is much higher in France than it is in the UK. This is primarily because they have a higher rate of scientific literacy. In an age where we have lost the blind faith in authority that once underpinned our trust, they are able to maintain trust because they can ask questions and resonate with the answers in a way that we aren't able to in the UK. The vicious circle in this experience is obvious. (The circulation of the Daily Mail is a terrifying confirmation.)

The UK's level of respect for science and engineering has fallen to a level where we allow people to refer to themselves as 'Washing Machine Engineers'. A good mechanic / plumber / technician has incredibly valuable skills, and I'm not questioning the value of the work, so I lay in the bath last night wondering why it irks me so much that BT keep referring to 'The Engineering Team' when I am confident that the 'Engineer' who does my installation will probably not be an Engineer in the BEng sense at all.

It occurred to me that it is because I do have faith in Engineers. I did my (manufacturing) degree in the fairly massive 'Mech Eng' department of Birmingham University, and I would honestly say that 99% of my fellow students are people I would trust to make decisions that impact on my safety. The bread and butter of an Engineer is the process of assessing factors, discarding unimportant ones, distilling the problem to the lowest practical level, identifying risks, imagining consequences and choosing a first line solution. The area of engineering is less important than the natural alignment with the process. True Engineers don't think "Oh, yes, I should start my process ... " they are doing it constantly - they can't do anything else. (This makes us quite irritating when you really just want a cup of tea and a cuddle and not a fully spec'd pareto-analysed solution matrix).

Air travel is the current whipping boy of the global warming debate. For those of you dreaming of heading off to sunshine rather than slitting your wrists in the drizzle of a British winter let me give you a number to ease your conscience.

1

Specifically 1 percent. This is the carbon contribution of the air travel industry to the global carbon footprint. (Actually I have figures that say about 1.2 %, and these things are estimated, but suffice it to say that whilst power generation for homes and business make up 60%, not taking your winter break is not going to save an icecap).

In the UK at the moment we're talking a lot about recycling. Pay as you throw. Green taxes on air travel. Taxing carrier bags. I suspect that these conversations are mostly the noise in the system. We need to be having a bigger conversation about our education system, so that we introduce into the electorate a generation of citizens who are scientifically and statistically literate enough to hold our leaders to account. They need to be emotionally and socially literate too - able to rise above marketing messages, to know which buttons are being pushed, to question themselves as well as authority.

What are the chances?

Fairly satisfying conversational moment

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:35:00 +0000

BT customer service rep: The thing is madam, I'm not an engineer ...

Me: I am.

BT customer service rep: Oh.

Politically incorrect observation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:00:00 +0000

Alan Johnson has made the ~~ridiculous~~ statement that within 25 years obesity will be a problem on a similar scale to climate change.

Am I the only person who sees a potentially symbiotic solution in syphoning the fat off of humans and using it to produce bio-fuels?

Argh!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:21:00 +0000

I am going to explode. Unless Ms Melancholy can give me some anger therapy pronto.

Today I rang BT again.

They have not actioned my order.

For the exact same reason as before.

They were very sorry. I shall tell this to my customers when they can't get hold of me, and my bank manager when I can't invoice people because I haven't finished the work because I can't get online. It's ok ... BT are very sorry.

Apparently there is a seven hour delay between the computers in their different departments. A request logged by BT person number 1 will not arrive with BT department 2 for seven hours.

As hundreds of millions of people all over the globe are currently passing information in almost real time by phone and internet, I can only conclude that BT themselves have no phones and no broadband.

Perhaps they've not been able to get it installed because they can't find their own address?

The irony is that this morning they sent me, as a new business customer, a link to a range of services they would like to sell me to help me use communications to serve my customers more efficiently and more effectively.

Maybe I should forward it on to them?

*sigh*

Boring Whinge Alert

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:45:00 +0000

I have learned through experience to avoid having any dealings with British Telecom if at all possible.

Their touch feely adverts don't fool me - they have consistently given me the worst customer service I've ever experienced, and so it was with massive reluctance that I contacted them to arrange for a new phone line and broadband to be installed at our new home.

I was so confident about their capacity to ~~royally fuck it up~~ fail to deliver that I rang them a few weeks ago to confirm the procedure and the lead times.

I have no choice but to go with BT - they haven't yet fully unbundled the local loop at my new exchange, so essentially they are the only provider. I added a few days to the theoretical lead times they gave me, and placed my order last week.

I was charged £107 to book the installation of the new line. And another £300 'deposit' because, for the reasons above, I haven't been a BT customer for years.

I was sent a strange email with details of my broadband installation, giving a phone number to be activated. Strange as I don't yet have a line at the property. I rang them and was told "Don't worry - it's just a holding number, they can't process the order without the number, when your line is installed it will be a different number ... nothing to worry about - everything is fine!".

I was promised a phone call within 48 hours to confirm my appointment. It never came. My 48 hours expired late on friday, by which time their offices were closed until this morning.

This morning they told me that my order hasn't been placed for a new line. They have charged me but they haven't actually booked an install. They were going to just 'switch on' broadband on a line that doesn't exist. They were wrong to reassure me about the weird phone number - they should have realised that there was a problem when I flagged it last week. They lost my credit check and can't find most of my details. The account is compromised so they need to start a completely clean order. This means we are starting again. I can expect a phone call in 48 hours to tell me when they might see fit to install the line. It will not be on friday, when I have arranged to be in Yorkshire for the purpose. I will not be in the house again until we move on the 5th November. The satellite can't be installed until after the phone line. By the time BT give me a call to book an installation the window for booking a satellite install in the first week will be gone.

The girl who broke all the good news to me was cheerful and helpful. She took it rather well when I said "You are the worst company I ever have to deal with, and I know it's not your fault, but believe me, if I had any other option I would never give you my business in a million years." She simply said "Yes, I know. Sorry!".

The reason for the screw up, apparently, was that even though I kept telling them my address was not the one they were finding, but had "Cottage" on the end, to distinguish it from other half of the barn, they put the order through for my next door neighbour's address. Finding that address already had a BT line but not broadband, 'they' decided to revise the order accordingly, and down-graded it to a broadband-only order.

GRRRRRRR.

The only thing that is calming me down is looking at Badger's stunning photo of cows in the mist she took on the way home last night ...

The Wisdom of Freecycle

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:38:00 +0000

A message posted on my local freecycle board today:

I am desperately in need of a large pine chest of drawers if anyone wants to get rid of an item like this it will be going to an appreciative home.

Is it just me, or is it impossible to need something desperately and also need it in pine?

However, it made me realise that if I think I need something very specific, then I actually don't need it at all.

It is completely reasonable to urgently need a new mobile phone, for example. But to urgently need a new iPhone is something else.

Needs, I have decided, don't have brands. They can have dimensions, and specifications like gas / electric, they can require a type of fitting or connection, but they don't have colours, and needs definitely don't come in pine.

Can't give it away

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:35:00 +0000

Apparently the charity shops in Guildford are unable to accept donations at present.

This is clearly proof that I am not the only person who has at least one of everything.

Badger and I shall be moving on the 5th November up to Yorkshire, with exactly the contents of 2 luton vans, 1 dog bus (peugeot partner in the trade) and one mini. So, we are giving away, selling and donating a lot of Things. Today I filled the dog bus boot with 2 bin liners and six carrier bags full of stuff. And I drove it to oxfam, where they informed Dr But Why? that they don't need any Things right now thank you please.

Fortunately the recycling team at the local tip were quite happy to sort it into the back of their van. They told me that they sell books by the palate load (ok, they weren't that specific) to second hand book shops, the clothes will be donated, and the DVDs and videos and gorilla slippers will be resold and the money goes back into the running of the recycling center.

But. I found it really rather unsettling. There is something out of alignment in my world when I am no longer able to give Things to charity. I can't decide whether this means that the economy has slowed to such a rate that people aren't even buying second hand, or is so buoyant that we're all buying so much that we need to keep clearing out closets to make room for the shiny purchases.

I am amazed by the sheer quantity of Things I have. I am letting go of as much as possible ... books, sideboard, bread machine, ... and it feels good. I wrote last july about needing to lose about 2.5 metric tons ... and the cat needing to lose about half a kilo. I think she's just about got there ... fingers crossed this crash diet badger and I are on works in time!

New nest ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:05:00 +0000

*sigh*

A perfect place to live, write, work, cook, eat, play guitar, walk, learn, read, sleep and love.

A different kind of falling ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:54:00 +0000

the things I thought were falling apart
they were just falling into place

This weekend I became a parent. Of sorts. I met the boy who is going to become my sort-of-stepson, and tumbled into love I haven't really experienced before.

I was anxious about our meeting. On thursday night I had bizarre dreams about giving birth in which nobody would make me a cup of tea and someone insisted I go bell ringing. In the dream I told my continuously morphing partner that we must give the child a name that would be good for a dog. I suppose this is the only experience I've had of any kind of parenting really - trying to bring up Ruby to be secure and well mannered. I have half succeeded.

The anxiety, I realise now, was not that he would not like me. I think that would be manageable, understandable - I half expected it, warned by all and sundry of the potential for resentment, confusion and anger that he might experience on being told that his mother was not only asking him to accept a new partner in her life, but that the partner was a woman. As it was, he was completely unperturbed, being a remarkably wise and sanguine example of a 12 year old boy, but regardless, I realised that the deep anxiety was that I might not like him.

But I did. I loved him, liked him, found him interesting and funny and easy to talk to. I am not just feeling ok about moving in with him as well as his mum, I am absolutely exploding with excitement about it.

All being well, in about 5 weeks time I will be moving, with Badger, up to a lovely little barn conversion in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales. And then his mum, the most amazing person I have ever ever ever met, and gorgeous boy, will join us when they feel ready. And with 4 cats and 1 dog and a few chickens, we will be a perfect, if slightly unconventional family.

I can't believe how amazing my life is today, and how excited I am about my future. The relationship I have with my new love just blows me away. I feel lucky every time I think about it. And not because I am not worthy blah blah blah ... I do feel worthy - I feel like I am a lovely person too, loved equally by her, and just incredibly lucky to have found my soulmate midst the six billion people on the planet.

A year ago, quite frankly, everything sucked. I was about as low as you can go, and life seemed to have no purpose or plan. My partner and best friend of several years had left me. I hated myself and had few friends and felt incredibly deeply alone almost all the time. Today I have an amazing partner, a wonderful friendship with Badger as well as strong relationships with quite a few others, and am beginning the adventure of being part of a child's life as they become an adult. I know myself, understand myself, have a philosophy on life that feels coherent and I love my work. I have somehow* discarded the sense of being 'not enough'. As a result I feel able to try things without being paralysed by a need to do them brilliantly - including becoming a sort-of-ish parent. (eek!)

I feel absolutely sure that I could not have all of this richness in my life simply by tacking extensions on to the person I was a couple of years ago. The difference in foundations would have destabilised the structure, and cracks would have spread and turned to fissures. I needed to be bulldozed, dug out and flattened, so that I could start again from scratch.

I suspect this is an experience shared by the people who held me together, who smiled at the mess and the chaos and the destruction, and firmly reassured me that all sorts of things were possible. Some of those people were therapists, some were nurses or doctors, and quite a few were bloggers.

So. I shall be starting a new business shortly, peddling t-shirts and badges bearing the simple statement "Blogging changed my life". Any takers?

--

*somehow = with lots of therapy and deep conversations with very wise people, face to face and online.

You know you're moving to the country when ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 13:51:00 +0000

... the houses you're looking at have Mains Drainage listed as a feature.

Fortunately Badger and I have survived a winter in the treehouse with only the minimum statutory level of whinging about the cold. (We have no central heating and just one wood stove. A bit like almost the entire population did up until really quite recently.)

And goodness me, I've just had a realisation that I'm really quite judgmental and prejudiced about how other people might be judgmental and prejudiced. I shall try to be open minded about whether other people are open minded. *sigh*.

One of the best things about Badger is that she's good at talking to new people. Breaking all aspergers stereotypes, Badger is actually much less shy than I am in a typical social situation. I suspect that it is almost impossible not to like Badger. Where as I know that there are aspects of me that are deeply unlikable ... though usually I manage to keep most of them well hidden on a first meeting.

So, the prospect of moving with Badger is rather less daunting than moving on my own would be. I shall wave Badger off as she goes out to make new Friends down the pub or the WI or whatever the local social hub may be ... and then hope that she'll introduce me or bring people back for tea.

I'm actually a tiny bit serious about joining the WI. The older I get, the more I appreciate people older than me. I have excellent rudimentary jam making skills, and Badger makes a wonderfully crumbly cheese scone ... though I've heard they're more inclined towards topless modeling these days :)

94% pure nerd

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:48:00 +0000

Ok, so bobo was right!

I think I would have scored higher, but I fell down on my personal hygiene (for not having any dead rodents or insects in the room in which I am working).

I don't speak vulcan by the way. And I've never played dungeons and dragons. But I do have 4.5GB of ram in my Mac!

Colour tells us what to do, by Stray, age 7

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:13:00 +0000

If there is a new house or building near you it will probably have some electrical cables showing out. In those cables there will be two smaller cables one will be red and one will be black. The black one is neutral and the red one is live. Yo should never touch a live of red piece of wire because if someone switched on the electricity you would probably die. The wires lead to a socet a normal plug looks like this. (diag) In a socket you put a plug but in a plug is a little different it has an extra wire which is yellow and green and a fuse a fuse is a safty divice it stops all the electricity going through to the t.v.

My parents sent me this earlier today. I have a feeling the other 7 year old girls in my class might have been somewhat less interested in electrical wiring. Apparently the diagram is completely correct, down to the glass fuse with it's internal wire.

Today I am doing some Very Clever Things with recursion and making a beautiful website out of numbers.

I am still a geek, but these days I am much better paid.

I thoroughly recommend living with a person with Tourette Syndrome ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 08:07:00 +0000

... or should I say a Badger with Tourette Syndrome.

I was putting away my washing this morning (oh, the excitement!) whilst Badger was getting ready for ~~school~~ work. It's comforting to hear Badger's little chirps and clucks and squeaks as she makes a cup of tea, though Dr But Why? did recently point out that I have started mistaking Badger's cat Frank for her, such is the quality of his impression of her echoalia ...

Anyway. I am always rather impressed by Badger's noises. She is a fantastic mimic, where I am really rather crap at whistling and squeaking in general, and far too self-conscious to even contemplate attempting to impersonate a peacock.

But something strange is happening. I have started to respond to Badger's noises in kind. It's not deliberate, and it only happens if I am engaged in something else at the time ... but I have found myself squeaking, squawking and clicking back. And this morning I chirruped! And it was really rather a good chirrup at that, and surprisingly enjoyable to do.

I feel liberated. It was like some sort of therapeutic experience that you would normally have to pay for and might involve lots of sitting in a circle earnestly listening to other people ~~whinge~~ share about their insecuritites, before being strong armed into pretending to be a tree / flower ... no, let's not go there.

So, thank you Badger!

A meme to change the world ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:04:00 +0000

First off ... Happy birthday Dad! 59 today ... wow.

My parents brought us up to have opinions about Stuff. It was a Very Good Thing.

I was recently chatting to Ms Melancholy about the way our hearts sink around people who just don't take an interest in the world. Working in the meedya, you come across an alarming number of people who don't really have any politics - not to say that they are central, moderate or balanced - but that they haven't ever really engaged with the discussions. Of course, you can find people who think that the way the world operates isn't really their problem in every walk of life (probably even politics!) but the combination of apathy and influence really bothers me.

I understand the value of a rigorous opposition ... I would rather someone held a view in opposition to mine than simply shrugged and turned to the sports / fashion pages. (In my world you need to reverse those gender stereotypes by the way - so that would be a female / male response ... ).

So. What to do?

Well, Ms M and I also had an interesting discussion about the mixed feelings that emerge when your underground passion becomes part of the mainstream world, as happened last summer to blogging.

Combining the two ideas in a reckless fashion I have decided that the electoral vote should be promoted to the status of a privilege rather than a right. In order to protect the system from political corruption, people will be selected and excluded on the basis of behaviours (not simply ideas) entirely without political basis. And I believe that bloggers are just the right people to make up the rules because if there is one thing we have in abundance, it's opinions!

So - here is my 'Rules for a new democratic process' meme. Please copy the existing text between the lines, and simply add your own, non-political criteria for the exclusion of people from the electoral roll. If you could include a link back to here, or post in the comments, then I will be able to track the progress of our strategic development and forward it to Gordon Brown / The United Nations forthwith.

Thank you.

----------------------------------------------------

Dear Gordon Brown,

We propose that the current apathetic attitude towards electoral responsibility could be resolved by the removal of a number of citizens from the electoral roll. We believe that this will create a sense of pride in being eligible to vote, just like back in the days when women had to throw themselves under horses in order to prove that they truly wanted to engage in the process. Whilst this practice was clearly effective, we believe the recent cuts in NHS A&E provision have created a climate in which it would be unviable to encourage people to go to such lengths to win their vote.

Instead, we propose that the following non-political behaviours be used as rules for the exclusion of people from the electoral roll. These rules have been gathered via a democratic consultation process that didn't cost any money, involve the hiring of large numbers of consultants, or require painting a special design on a double decker bus.

Many thanks for your time and attention,

Assorted Bloggers (as below)

For the purposes of the trimming of the electoral roll, the following behaviours should be grounds for exclusion:

1. Purchasing a 'Britney Spears on Pan Pipes' CD (or equivalent). - http://dailystraying.blogspot.com

Add your rule and your blog signature here ...

----------------------------------------------------

Wouldn't it be nice if ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:04:00 +0000

... someone invented an apple-F (ctrl-F to you PC users) for the real world?

That'll teach me ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 14:22:00 +0000

Blogging has been good to me.

Through my blog I have met a significant handful of incredibly lovely people who I am privileged to know. I have drawn out parts of myself which were dormant and timid. I've had a thousand moments of being aware of something 'bloggable' for every hundred posts I've actually got around to blogging.

I've laughed.

I've cried.

And if I hadn't been neglecting my blog I might well now be rich beyond my wildest imaginings (which aren't actually very wild).

You see, last Monday night I had A Great Idea. It was something so definitely necessary and produceable and marketable that Dr But Why? and I were stunned to realise it hadn't been done before. And I remember saying "I shall blog that - or at least I shall blog the fact that I've had such a good idea ... ".

And now, six days later, neither of us can remember the faintest detail of The Great Idea.

I do remember that I was standing by the chopping board in the kitchen when I had it. Dr But Why? remembers that she was making a hot chocolate at the time, about to get herself an early night. We stood and stared around the kitchen earlier for a good half hour. Dr But Why? went back to first principles to try to recall, where as I attempted to redraw the exact moment I had it, hoping to reconnect the missing information to my consciousness.

We do remember that it had something to do with the kitchen.

Anyone got any suggestions?

*sigh*

Unimportant things that are wrong with the world (1)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:00:00 +0000

The prize for the Observer cryptic crossword is a dictionary. The prize for the Sunday Times cryptic crossword is a pen.

I have been unable to come up with a scenario in which someone who can complete a prize cryptic crossword does not already own a dictionary and a pen.

Ms Melancholy is rather good at cryptic crosswords. She popped down to the treehouse a couple of weeks ago to visit Badger and I, and we did so many crosswords that when I read a sports headline this week saying "Kelly wins our first (and last) medal?" I immediately started unscrambling it.

I am no longer able to interpret meaning literally, but instead am looking for obscure alternative contexts. The cyberneticist Gregory Bateson wrote a wonderful paper on Schizophrenia which is included in "Steps to an Ecology of Mind", which talks about the Schizophrenic experience as being one of taking the information but shifting the context. I have no direct personal experience of the condition, which is of course really just a blanket term for a set of experiences, as we have no 'piss-on-a-stick' test for it as far as I know, but I have met quite a few people with differences in perception or communication which would be loosely lassoed into the 'Schizophrenia' pen, and it does feel like cryptic crosswords are quite a good fit.

On the other hand, Badger's interpretation of the world can often involve the sort of literal meaning-taking that produces similarly bizarre interpretations. Ms Melancholy and I had been out and about, and were coming back to eat some lovely Thai Green Prawn curry that super-chef Badger was whizzing up for us all. Ms Melancholy made a quick phone call to Badger once we knew we were about 15 minutes away ...

Ms M: Hi Badger! Yes, we're not far away - just on the M25 about to hit the A3, do you want us to pick anything up for you?

Badger: Off the M25? Pick me something up off the M25? I don't think so ... no ...

Bless. I suppose Badger was just answering the exact question Ms M had asked!

Funnily enough we didn't come home with a traffic cone, road kill or a single shoe. Speaking of which - why do people throw shoes into the central reservation? Is it because they left the other one on the top of a bus shelter?

:Insert dramatic photo here:

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 07:55:00 +0000

Woof.

Woof woof.

Woof woof woof.

Ruby isn't a yappy kind of dog. One of the good traits of Boxer dogs is that they only bark when there is something to bark at - they bark almost exclusively to alert. Ok, sometimes they are alerting you to a dangerous carrier bag blowing in the wind, but better safe than sorry hey :)

So, when I heard Ruby's very definite "Mum! Mum! Something is wrong!" bark down in the bottom of the quarry, I pricked up my ears. It continued for a little while, so I went to the door and shouted to her.

Woof.

Woof woof.

Woof woof woof.

(I didn't shout the woofs, I shouted words, she barked back. Just incase you were confused).

I had a friend over at the time, and as I pulled on my shoes I said "Sorry, it's just that it definitely sounds like there's something wrong - I'd better go and check ... " I felt like a bit of an idiot saying it to be honest. Ruby isn't known for her Lassie-esque heroic exploits.

Woof.

Woof woof.

Woof woof woof.

I was calling reassurance to Ruby as I walked down to the area of long grass, and each time I called, she barked back, the same urgent bark.

And then I saw it.

Ruby was circling the biggest snake I have seen outside of a zoo.

It was coiled, head raised a good six or eight inches above the ground, hissing and spitting at her as she barked at it. Instant adrenaline. Ruby has a heart condition and I knew that if it was an adder then her chances of surviving a bite were pretty much none. I couldn't get near enough to her to grab her collar without risking both of us being bitten, and the snake was looking even more pissed off about the arrival of a human ... eek!

For the first time since I moved here I was grateful that the place is half paradise / half junkyard. There is a derelict cottage not far from where we were standing and the rubble and rubbish from the building collapse and subsequent fly tipping has created a sprawl of junk that spreads in the wind and had conspired to leave a piece of some sort of rubbery roofing stuff about a foot and a half square just a couple of meters from where I was standing.

As I went to grab it I found my right hand patting my pocket where my phone/camera lives, and I actually contemplated taking a photo so that I could blog it. Taking a photo so that I could identify it might have been a good idea - especially as the current environmental survey here is counting snakes and the lovely ecologists who visit would have been absolutely thrilled ... but no, my only thought was that it was very very bloggable! More adrenaline fuelled a quick decision to abandon the photo idea.

I chucked the black square over the top of the snake from behind, and instantly Ruby was calm and controllable and we walked back up to the house, where I promptly got the shakes, cried a bit and drank quite a lot of tea.

It wasn't the snake itself - if it had just been me I would definitely have taken photos and enjoyed the adventure. It was the fact that my baby nearly got bitten by a snake!. It reminded me of a moment the previous day when had seen a man burst into tears on the tube after his little boy pressed the "Open doors" button as we were hurtling down the tunnel. I had watched the boy doing it, knowing full well that the doors would not open, but clearly his father had not had this confidence. The boy couldn't understand why his dad was holding him so tightly afterwards, and I'm sure Ruby was similarly bemused at my squeezes.

At over 2 ft long, the snake was almost certainly a grass snake, we'd have been very unlucky to be bitten at all and the consequences probably wouldn't have been that serious. It had a distinct cucumber shaped bulge half way along it's body(which luckily, was not one of Badger's cucumbers, she'd have been very cross!) so it obviously did present a danger to some of the local inhabitants, just not us.

Phew.

DIY-not?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 22:31:00 +0000

Here in the treehouse, we like to do things for ourselves.

When I first met Badger her idea of cooking was to put a Birds Eye frozen chicken pie in the oven for approximately the right length of time. To this day, if I make something really good, Badger exclaims cheerfully: "Wow - it tastes just like it came out of a packet!"

So, it was a major occasion this week when we picked and ate the first couple of Badger's home grown runner beans.

As well as Badger's homegrown beans (soon to be joined by tomatoes, cucumber and peppers) we have our fresh eggs from the girls, who have been pretty much bound to the shed recently after two of them were butchered by a vicious mink. We had a loose pen for them, which did a good job of keeping them from wandering off into the woods, but did nothing to keep out anything that might fancy chicken for lunch.

Fuelled by the recent tropical rains, the area by the chicken shed had magically transformed into a jungle ...

The problem of "how do we keep out intruders" has been debated by Dr But Why? and me for some time. We baulked at the idea of a concrete trench and instead began surveying the tumbled down outbuildings and piles of strange rubble that lurk in the woods. We eventually identified a dozen or so large concrete blocks, perfect for constructing a perimeter wall that would be stable enough to prevent entry into the bottom of the coop and yet unstable enough to fall on the head of any nasty stoat trying to dig a tunnel in. Perfect except for their location, deep in the woods half way down the quarry, somewhere behind the rhubarb field and the apple trees. Which is where they would still be if Dr But Why? wasn't significantly larger than me and fitted with the kind of personality defect that makes this kind of task a challenge.

I did manage to move some of the blocks some of the way. Which I think is no mean feat given that we estimate that they weigh only a few kilos less than I do. But I can't claim any credit for the moving of approximately 400 kg of concrete into position.

We had the sort of plan that an engineer-turned-software-programmer and a scientist-turned-consultant might come up with. A vague outline of our deliverables and a definite investment in the "Extreme Programming" methodology of basically striking out risks until the job was done. We reused a random wooden frame we found under the treehouse, a couple of long thick lengths of wood I had in the garage left over from building my sister a bespoke cabin bed, and the 'fence posts' from the old chicken run, which were actually old slats from Badger's single bed.

Staple gun, self-tapping screws, power drill ... and bob's yer builder, we have a chicken coop!

Badger was most pleased. The chickens were thrilled (in their own chickeny way) and proceeded to scratch, peck and rub themselves in the dirt in a very enthusiastic fashion. The discovery of a major ants nest just outside the coop was, I imagine, the poultry equivalent of realising you've moved in next door to a chinese takeaway.

Not content to stop at growing our own veg, keeping chickens and bashing things with hammers, we're a little bit partial to cutting our own hair. About every six weeks I undertake the interesting and somewhat physically dangerous task of attempting to tune in to Badger's tics for long enough to give her a quick crop without taking out my own eye or chopping the top off of her ear. Badger is quite a demanding client - she has very specific ideas about how her hair should be, and a tendency to only offer input about three quarters of the way through the process.

Many hairdressers will be familiar with clients arriving with a fantasy in mind - a dream of having hair just like Jennifer Aniston or Lady Diana (RIP) ... and Badger is no exception.

I would like my hair to look just like Wylie Kat ...

I rack my brains. Cat Deely? Cat Stevens? Nope ... I'm drawing a blank.

Wylie Kat out of Thundercats.

Oh. Of course!

And it does.

...

A variation on Murphy's law

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:45:00 +0000

My house is approximately 1 part carpet (and grass matting) to 19 parts wipe-clean floor surfaces (marble, lino, stone).

And yet, when faced with a major failure of their digestive system, the animals never fail to vomit (or worse) on to a non-wipe-clean area.

There is even an exception to prove the rule. On Friday I went to a one hour lunch meeting in London which lasted almost five hours. As a result Ruby was at home, un-emptied, for far longer than I would normally leave her. Dr But Why? was first through the door, to discover that Ruby had rather cleverly gone to the toilet inside a partially filled bin-liner which contained various bits of plastic rejected by our recycling collection. Bless her.

I promise to post something less disgusting tomorrow.

Slow worms (not glow worms)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:23:00 +0000

There continues to be something wonderfully circular about this blog. Or do I mean cyclical? Both probably. Something reassuringly the-same-but-different about the content of the posts, which really I suppose is about the content of my life.

So, just over a year ago I posted this description of an evening spent on the downs behind our house, searching for glow worms. This week we have been counting slow worms here in our garden. The environmental assessment of this place, determining whether it is too important ecologically to be built on, continues. Some soft spoken men arrived last week and tolerated Ruby's enthusiastic jumping up very good naturedly as they explained that they would need to put several carpet tiles (they may actually be more than just carpet tiles but that's what they look like) in spots around the garden, and then return each day to count any lizards, snakes and slow worms underneath them.

A week later, they are averaging six to eight slow worms under each tile! Plus the occasional grass snake, and they are fairly sure that if they looked frequently enough they would find an adder or two. They also found one small lizard that ran off before they identified it. The badger set has been confirmed as active, and as well as a small group of friendly Roe deer we have both stoats and mink - it was an evil mink that butchered our chickens several months ago.

They've noted down several interesting variations of wild orchid, and some blue butterflies which may be of the rarer varieties.

They haven't done a bird assessment yet, but we have both of the major types of bat native to the UK ... so all in all it's a pretty comprehensive checklist of protected species.

The environmental assessment guy told me today that he loves visiting our house, because he feels like he is back in Canada - his favourite place he has ever lived. He told me that the patch of overgrowth we were rummaging in, the clearing where the grass is tall and thick with flowers, where clouds of crickets and butterflies are kicked up with every step and lizards slither away unseen, where you can make out the shapes of the deer who slept there the night before, is intended to be a carpark for the development. Of course.

Slow worms are quite amazing creatures really. They live for up to 30 years in the wild, almost twice as long in captivity. I'd guess that some of our slow worms have been in this garden longer than the architects on the project have known how to hold a pencil. And suddenly I can understand why perfectly normal people end up chaining themselves to bulldozers!

The big smoothie dilemma

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 07:30:00 +0000

At the weekend I made a smoothie out of the numerous pieces of fruit in the fruit bowl and fridge that were perched precariously on the edge of going furry. It contained mango, plum, nectarine, blueberries, banana, raspberries, melon, papaya, strawberries and grapes. (No courgettes, despite them being sneaky members of the fruit family). And I stood back and thought to myself "What a lot of vitamins / air miles". Now, there is no doubt that the vitamin to air mile ratio of this smoothie is better than a lot of the rubbish we / I import and eat. And Dr Gillian McKeith would probably squeak in glee and pronounce me immortal after drinking this cocktail (particularly once I'd added the live yogurt) ... but still - is that benefit to me (and Badger, and Dr But Why?) worth the damage to the planet?

This stuff is particularly at the forefront of my mind because one of my current projects involves editing and making an interactive documentary about a very interesting book which doesn't yet have a title but goes under a working subtitle of "Why Global Warming is the best thing that has ever happened to the human race." It's a complicated argument, and before you can begin to think about "best" you of course need to settle on a definition of "good" and "bad".

The author's working method of determining between good and bad is quite simple. Things which are expansive and inclusive are broadly good, things which are contractive and exclusive are broadly bad. Thus, legislation which prevents negative discrimination against, to take my own minority, gay people, is good even if from time to time it infringes on the basic freedoms of individuals who are homophobic - this calculation is based on the fact that (in the UK at least) there are more gay people than people who are genuinely damaged by the fact that they can't openly discriminate against us. More people experience inclusion as a result of this change than exclusion. We're not into measuring degrees of benefit or damage - simply whether people feel more inside or outside of the circle.*

I quite like this method of calculation. It seems both human and scientific at the same time. (No, I don't want to further define those terms - I simply feel that in my gut, and as both a human and a scientist that is good enough for me!)

So. On the question of my nine-fruit smoothie, and the fact that there are no papayas growing in Surrey ... I expect that the international trade in exotic fruit is actually more expansive and inclusive than it is contractive and exclusive. Food is a doorway into other cultures etc etc.

Now to more pressing issues. NMJ raised the issue of resisting joining Facebook. It's something I've been wrestling with recently - on Monday I received an email inviting me to become Ruby's friend on Facebook. (For new readers - Ruby is my dog.) I have a limited amount of time for non-work internet stuff, and I have a gut feeling that, for me, Blogging is better than Facebook.

I realised that this is essentially a social smoothie question. Facebook and Blogging do quite different things. Facebook maintains existing networks and facilitates groups of common interest / association. Blogging is so much broader. You already know that, because you're reading this.

So, next time someone pesters me about not being a member of Facebook I shall simply tell them that I like really really exotic smoothies, and very occasionally I like to throw in a courgette. ;)

--

*Of course we all feel inside / outside of the circle to varying degrees, or even multiple degrees at the same time and this is a constantly changing experience depending on the momentary relationships we have with the various aspects of our selves, but in very simplistic terms I can generally say whether, when something changes, I feel more or less included than I did before. Inclusion is not the same as membership. Accepting an invitation may carry terms and conditions, the value of investments may go down as well as up, etc etc etc.