short circuit.

No, I have't blown a fuse - I'm just referring to today's cycle trip, a very pleasant, but hilly twenty-mile ride. I started off from home, then headed towards Stoke Row, down to Highcliff, then Rotherfield Greys and Henley, followed by Harpsden and up to Binfield Heath, Emmer Green and back home - an hour and a half all told.

Bleary eyed

I'm feeling knackered. It's been a fraught week, and things, work-wise at least, are going to get fraughter. Yes, I know it should be 'more fraught', but if Lewis bloody Carroll can get away with 'Curiouser and curiouser', then I'll bloody do as I like. The trouble with this season is the exams: I'm responsible for organising the things for my department, and it all gets on top of me somewhat at this time of year. It is not helped by having to do two twelve and a half hour days. And, just to add to that, there is also the small matter of training for a 90-mile cycle ride to Bath at the end of June, hence the reason for the last post.
Last sunday saw me and my cycling partners (Rob Podolski and Julie Shepherd, plus her boyfriend) ride to Guildford via the Thames Path, route 4 and the Wey towpath route, all on the hottest day of the year so far - up to 29c. It started well, going along the Thames to Sonning, then turning off towards Charvil and the Wargrave, followed by a truly spectacular piece of riding through fields of bright yellow rapeseed overlooking where the Thames Valley descends towards Windsor, then a trip through the suburbs of Maidenhead and into Bray, past the Fat Duck and then deep into Becoming Lost. After recourse to a couple of maps, we got under way again, just in time to get lost once more. Finally we got to Windsor and into the Great Park, where we had a lunch of bananas and shortbread, before descending through Bishopsgate towards Egham and Shepperton, where we took an exorbitantly expensive ferry towards Weybridge, and thence onto the Wey Navigation Towpath, which also included an oportunity to get lost one more time, just before what I can only describe as a mostly HELLISH 20-mile ride over rutted, dusty, hard, knurled and knuckled and tree-root-twisted towpath, cycling against the flow of some kind of cross-country run and old people walking unfeasible numbers of small dogs that seemed to be fatally attracted to fast-moving cycle wheels.
 Overall, I covered just about 100 kilometres, so I'm pretty pleased with that.
But the real reason I'm feeling bleary eyed is twofold: being woken up by birdsong at 4.30 and my bloody hayfever, which has reduced me to a red-eyed mess despite medication over the last week. bluh.

Robert Podolski is fundraising for PCaSO Prostate Cancer Network - JustGiving

Robert Podolski is fundraising for PCaSO Prostate Cancer Network - JustGiving

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Bloody Elections... and cycling

I've avoided posting anything for the past week simply because so many other would be posting on the subject of the General Election results. By and large, it's been rather depressing - actually, seeing David Cameron's posho smug face outside no.10 tonight, very depressing. As an aside, will it be a requirement of all future PMs to have a sprog born in the Prime Ministerial residence from now on? First Blair, then Brown, now Cameron; it's like the British version of porphyrogenita.
 I don't know about you, but there is something utterly maddening about the current batch of Tories. The fact that three of them - Cameron, George Osborne (the newly-incumbent Chancellor), and Boris Johnson (Mayor of London)- were all in the Bullingdon Club at the same time seems suspect, but more irritatingly is their smug belief in their innate, almost god-given, right to govern others. Says bloody who? Cameron had only one or two short-term jobs prior to becoming a politician, selling advertising, and George has never held down a proper job in his whole life. What the hell makes them think they're bloody qualified to do a damn thing?
As for Nick Clegg - well, I think he was given a terrible choice, and he (and the Lib Dem leadership) chose terribly. Once the spending cuts and tax hikes that are inevitable are announced, they are hardly going to be popular. However, trying to be positive, if they are seen as full coalition members of goverment, they may provide a decent check on Tory policies.

Sorry, I thought I just saw a flying pig there.


OK, enough about politics for now. In other news, I cycled from Reading to Oxford via NCN route 5 (approx 40 miles) on sunday, doing it in three and a half hours. Far more enjoyable than trying to strangle a TV because David Cameron's face is on it. I will be atempting a 90-miler to Bath in June - I'll be whacking the link to a justgiving page on here soon.

It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.

You may be wondering,perhaps, why I haven't commented much on the General Election, considering that politics is a frequent subject of this blog. It's a combination of exhaustion, lethargy, geberally avoiding Doing Things and a degree of puzzlement. By nature, I'm more of a Labour supporter than anything else, but this election has thrown everything up in the air. I have the feeling that whoever gets into government come next thursday will decide the way this country is going for many, many years to come, far beyond the lifetime of a single Parliamentary cycle. Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, may well be right when he says 'whoever is the government this time around will be out of power for a generation after'. He says this because whoever gets in will have to make cuts and tax increases of such severity that they will not exactly be Mr. Popular with the electorate.

 Perhaps it's precisely this issue that is haunting all the three main parties to the extent that not a single one has a Big Idea - a single, defining thought for change. By and large, they come out almost sounding the same, bar one or two bits here and there. Having listened to and watched the Prime Ministerial debates over the last three weeks, I can't say that anyone come out on top - certainly not David Cameron. I really don't understand why opinion polls put him consistently ahead. He didn't say anything of substance, just anecdotes of dubious provenance and the phrase 'We've got to...' repeatedly. It's all very well saying that something has to be done, but how? that's the real question, and Cameron didn;t answer it. Gordon Brown was much better on facts, substance and method, but he has all the charisma of a sock full of thistles. Clegg was a revelation, only because he hadn't made any impression whatsoever beforehand. Some of his ideas were, I felt, on the naieve side, and he would certainly get a shock if he tried to implement them in the febrile, jumpy atmosphere of government.
There's only one idea worth going for that two parties have suggested - electoral reform. Both Labour and the Lib Dems have it in their manifestoes. Whether it would ever be put into law within a parliamentary cycle is debatable, to put it mildly, and it certainlt won't cure the economic woes of the country. What it may do, however, is open governement to a new democratic paradigm within the UK. It would also force the Big Three to alter, in some cases radically, and open them up to new ideas and policies, rather than have the Same Old Politics again and again, and which seem to end up getting all of us into the Same Old Mess eventually.
And as for the person who said to me that they wouldn't vote because it was against their beliefs, I say that making no choice is still a choice and often the worst one. When faced with a decision, avoiding it does not equate to a good thing. Vote, and vote according to what you have read, understood, want and need. Don't vote in a particular way just because you've always voted for this or that party, or your parents have, or someone's told you to. Vote and know you've done it for the right reasons.

everyone has to start somewhere

Sean's splodges. Good, aren't they? In a blobby, Rorscharch ink blot test kind of way.

Above us only sky....

See that? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Just a perfect blue sky. Not a single contrail to be seen, thanks to the Volcanic Ash cloud currently floating over Europe.With the exception of a few small airplanes, the only sound of flying things is that of birdsong.

Death of an Anarchist

Just heard that Malcolm McLaren has died. There's nothing quite like the death of a figure who loomed large in the public eye during your childhood to make you feel old.

And they're off!

So we have a month to the General Election. I think you can surmise, from previous entries, which way I'm likely to vote, but I still have my doubts. The problem is the manifestos published by each party - they're not all that inspiring. The BBC's web coverage already looks set to be excellent, and well worth checking out. Looking at the key priorities, Labour seem to be edging it in terms of stats to back up their targets. Both the Tories and the Lib Dems offer the scrapping of the ID card scheme, which is commendable, but hardly a key priority right now.
The trouble with the Tory manifesto is that it looks like it was scraped out of a Daily Mail editorial. It reads more like a wishlist than a set of concrete proposals. The most absurd, coming from my own career background, is the idea of Academy schools run by local communities and independent of local authority control. At first glance, it looks quite appealing - after all, it's the notion of communities helping themselves. Unfortunately, whoever dreamt this one up omitted to ask a very simple question: Why aren't local communities already investing themselves in the schools that already exist? Why not invest in them? In fact, I suspect the proposal is probably thoroughly unworkable. For starters, it would involve the diversion of budgets to establish the schools, whatever the Tories may say about private funding; Second, the chances of these academies ending up being run by private businesses or rich institutions with their own agendas is incredibly high. Public accountability would be limited (an opt-out school would not be subject to OFSTED inspections)- and don't we all want to know what happens to our children at school? Finally, I suspect that the whole scheme would eventually crumble - that, or we go back to a model of education that was discredited a long time ago.
Labour's Cancer notification plan is just an attention-grabber, and I suspect impossible to deliver within the time-frame of the next parliament. The same, probably, goes for the adoption of the Alternative voting system - any governement wishing to put through such a change to electoral procedure would need a solid majority.
The Lib Dems 'Identify £15bn of lower-priority spending and cut' is highly suspicious - define 'lower-priority spending'.
And this election is set to be the most personality-driven ever. So, based on what the potential PMs look and sound like, I'd say:
David Cameron: Posho Fake. Tony Blair Lite. Just does that sincere semi-frown thing like he's about to fart out a mini-turd of a policy
Nick Clegg: A man in search of someone who's got a mate who bought a dog off a bloke down the pub who knows where he can lay his hands on a nice bit of gravitas.
Gordon Brown: He's the bear, these are his woods, and damn if he isn't going to crap just where he likes.
And of course, all these politicos have to convince the electorate that they aren't bent, not like those expenses-fiddling lot last ti....oh, sorry, it was them, wasn't it?
If I were doing a campaign, I would start by this:
Each constituency candidate, in their publicity, states what their aims are,  both on a local level and on a party level. They limit this to just a few key items - whatever local issues there may be, and stuff like economy, defence etc.
Next, they state, explicitly, the steps required in order to achieve these aims, and the time frame required. next to this, they state as accurately as possible the amount of money required to complete these aims and each stage. That way, candidates can demonstrate a) value for money, and b) whether they're being fiscally realistic.
After all, good government comes out of good finances.

demigods and demons!

It was Angus' birthday yesterday - his twelfth! I find it hard to think that he will be gearing up for his first driving lessons in just over five years' time. And possibly moving off to university just another 18 months after that. They say children keep you young: However, it is in the counting of their years that you start to feel old. The fortunate thing is that this sense of impending senescence can be shared quite freely with friends and colleagues.

 He wanted a fairly quiet birthday - no parties, no jelly and ice cream - so we went to the cinema instead. Actually, it was an early introduction to the cinema that probably hastened his birth. Nur and I went to see Face/Off, and the volume on the thing was cranked up so loud (a typical feature of Turkish cinemas) that he started kicking and moving around violently in his mum's belly. He was born a few days later. Anyway, we went to see Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, the first of what bodes to be a long series of films. Angus has read the books, and had really wanted to see this. I wasn't too sure about it, even though I'm a great fan of anything fantastical and mythological, but how could I possibly disappoint my son on his birthday?
 I have to admit, I struggled somewhat through it. For starters, and for various reasons, I'd only had an hour and a half's sleep the night before, so you can imagine how I struggled against the morphean dark and warmth of a cinema. The film itself - hmm. Perfectly decent teen fodder, actually, although at odds with the book, as Angus couldn't help loudly pronouncing at various points throughout. However, I couldn't help but get annoyed by some of the extraordinary liberties taken with Greek mythologies. The worst was the portrayal of the Underworld as a place of burning torment. The ancient Greeks saw it as nothing such - rather, the place, with the exception of the lucky few who made it to the Elysian Fields, seemed to be rather like a particularly dismal office party somewhere in Croydon, except everyone had forgotten why they were there. This is still a step up from the Sumerian view of the Afterlife, however, where the soul was seen a limed bird, scratching futilely at dust forever. And I thought the portrayal of Hades as a dissolute ageing rock star was one of the laziest pieces of stereotyping I've seen in ages - you know, rock is the Devil's music etc. Obviously done with an eye on the pious God Botherer market, just to cater to their perception of what the underworld is.
 Two other things bothered me. Firstly, it was way too much Harry Potter, but with Ancient Greek Bits. It was the Destiny of the Orphan Boy story, where he is revealed to be far more than he thought. Now, this is a great meme - it has universal appeal: After all, who hasn't dreamed that they are some kind of Secret Prince, waiting to be revealed? Apart from Prince William, possibly. Which leads me into the second botherment, if you can survive such an ugly neologism. Why do we need Special? Why do we need Demigods? Why Gods? Why are we so ready to abrogate responsibility? Why do we need to to find the Get Out Clause and say 'I need a Hero?'
As far as I can see, the vast majority of Heroes in mythology are generally impetuous, not prone to introspection, eager to dole out violence, and mostly a bit dumb. But not quite as stupid as those who follow them, or look to them to solve their problems. You see, that's the problem with people - they're perfectly happy to hand over responsibility to some loud shouty fellow who says, 'I'm a leader, I've got the answer', rather than decide things for themselves, simply because they're a) lazy, b)busy with the minutiae of their immediate concerns, and c) stupid. After all, you wouldn't hand your valuables to a theif and expect him to look after them for you, so why hand over something far more valuable to someone who claims to lead - namely, your responsibility and your freedom?
This is precisel why I'm such a cynical bastard. I have no heroes. I never will. That doesn't mean I don't admire and respect people: I'm just aware that they are people, and thus frail. And they more they protest their strength, the more I see their vulnerability. I follow no flag, I follow no leader. I'm on no-one's side per se, since to do so would be to unfailingly accept all that they proclaim to be true, and that I can never do, for the reasons above. You might be on my side - but I will always point out my own doubts and weaknesses, and your own, too, and always this one phrase:
The Buck Stops With YOU. Deal with it.

Spring! Sprung! Racists abound!

The daffodils have finally put their trumpets out, the hazel trees in front of our house have their first tentative show of green budding leaf, there is the busy rat-a-tat-tat of woodpeckers in the stand of woods and the playful quarrelling noise of sparrows, red kites wheel overhead and sound their unearthly shriek, Easter eggs are half price and I've just spotted my first Nazi of the year.
  I went up to our local Tescos this morning to fill up the car with petrol and to buy some croisants. I had some problem getting a pump, as half of them were out of use - probably waiting for a delivery. Anyway, I got a pump, filled the car, then went inside and got the breakfast stuff, then waited on the surpisingly long sunday morning queue. Like most Tesco Expresses in the area, this one was staffed by young Asian men. In this case, Nepalis and Indians, guessing by the names. In the queue was a thick set man of about sixty, with what is most charitably described as a florid complexion, although Alcoholic's Red Face would also do nicely. His hair, though grey, was fairly full, as was his beer gut. He had on a blue Abbey Rugby Club tank top and checked shirt, and was wearing a face full of thunder. His turn came and he lurched towards the cashier. What followed was a load of very nasty invective, that began with 'Why don't you speak English?', to 'Are ye calling me a liar, paki?' (he was, I'd guess, an Ulsterman originally, judging by the accent), to other NF classics such as 'what are ye doing here?', to 'that's the problem with this place is youse lot', before stomping off to his car. The staff remained remarkably calm in the face of this. what was somewhat astonishing was that no-one in the very long queue said anything to stop this really rather nasty tirade. As it happened, it was my turn at the cashier who'd borne the brunt of this, and I said, rather loudly, 'morning. Sorry about the racist idiot', to which the guy smiled and said 'it's OK - he can come to my country and learn the language and see how he likes it', while the woman next to me said 'too right!'. I glanced back at the queue: Sorry to say, I got some hostile glances from two or three people, mostly those of the potato-shaped, shaven-headed variety.
I should also say, much to my own shame, that I only said the 'sorry about the racist idiot' line after the prick had left -I  very much wish I'd said it to his face.
Anyway, if you happen to go to Abbey Rugby club and meet an alcoholic sixty-year-old Ulsterman in a blue ARC tanktop, tell him what I think. Actually, give him a good kick for me.

And if I were to stop right now...

...how would I be seen?
Yes, I know, a very mid-life-crisis-type subject, and one that is born of a general dissatisfaction with myself and what I'm doing at present. Well, let's see: married, two boys, live in a nondescript semi-detached, degree and teaching diploma qualifications, steady job at the local college, moderately successful career, cycle to work, relatively fit, lived abroad for 7 years, speak a foreign language, aaaaannnnd that's it. Rather, that is what it looks like from the outside. And, measured against other people my age who have had successful careers etc etc (and who doesn't do it?), utterly bland.
And yet....photographer and photo editor for a magazine, contributor of poetry to a publication,writer of articles, writer of a novel (completed in 28 days), actor, enabler of others, creating the alchemy that allows people to suddenly function in another language, seeing my students go on to universities around the world, including Harvard, researcher, fluent in another language to the extent that can identify different accents and dialects, and able to understand more or less a family of languages that stretch from Edirne to the Western stetches of China, theorist, often of absurd theories admittedly, insatiably curious, completer of the 3 peaks challenge, teller of corny jokes and deliverer of witty ripostes, analytical, strategic-minded, someone who mostly seeks to do the right thing rather than the easy thing.....
Well, that sounds better.

Even so, there's only me to vouch for most of the above - it's true, honest! Yet what annoys me is that there is so much, much more to do, see, complete, and I feel that there just isn't time enough. And I also can't help but be waylaid by the notion of the general futility of everything. Here we are, little bright sparks thrashing briefly against the huge indifferent darkness, flash of fish scales in green gloom. Oh well, if futile it is, let it be positive futility. However, I'm far too adept at filling my time with nothings - being busy to no good purpose.

Kids' TV and applied physics.

I'm going back to an old topic of this blog, children's TV programmes. Currently, I'm watching an awful lot of these, thanks to 3-year-old Sean, who is an avid watcher of CBeebies. Actually, he's a tyrannical watcher, especially at the weekend. God forbid anyone should change channel while 3rd & Bird is on.
 I'm an amused and cynical watcher of kids' TV, but I have to say that British-made kids' stuff is largely better than the well-intentioned mush that emanates from the States - for starters, it's generally more whimsical and anarchic, and the only way to appreciate a majority of it is to either a) be three years old or b) have ingested huge amounts of drugs.Some of the older stuff on CBBC is actually quite good - 'Sorry, Ive got no head' is genuinely funny, especially the Witchfinder General sketches. And Horrible Histories is a truly Reithian piece of broadcasting.
 However, watching one programme today invoked an idle scientific question: What happens when someone shrinks? The programme was 'Grandpa in my Pocket', which is not, as the name might suggest, a child using blackmail in order to keep their grandparent under control, but the adventures of an old bloke, played by the indestructible James Bolam, who shrinks whenever he puts his Shrinking Hat on. Obviously.
Now, I began thinking, what would happen to someone if they did shrink to about a tenth of their height? Anyone more familiar with physics and chemistry than me out there, please tell me if I'm right or wrong, but I suspect the results would probably be somewhat disastrous.
 Imagine: you've got a person of roughly 1 metre 75 cm, weighing perhaps 75-80 kilos, with an average temperature of 37 deg. c. Now, if we say that the act of shrinking leads to a concommitant loss of weight, it still leaves us with a significant problem - where does all the heat go? you have a body pumping out a constant temperature and radiating over a constant surface area of skin. Now, if you reduce the surface area suddenly, wouldn't the result be that Grandpa would either a) be instantly cooked to a crisp or b) due to his blood boiling, explode?
Hmmm. That wouldn't make good kids' telly.
Mind you, I am half fearful sometimes when watching In the Night Garden that Upsy Daisy will stamp on the Pontypines, and have to scrape them off her shoe.

Normal service resumed

Phew!
A link to the hit counter had been hijacked, so I've removed the offending item..

Not much to write about at the moment, as I am currently in the middle of invigilating an exam, and keeping one eye on this and one on a particular student who I know can cheat in the blink of an eye.
I'm just going to give the thumbs up to Mangal Restaurant in Reading, a Turkish place that opened recently. If you're in town, try it - the food is pretty good, although I'm not too sure of the wisdom of tahini in an aubergine puree. Plus they sell raki, which can only be a good thing

WTF?

This blog seems to have been hijacked somehow - apologies. Hopefully, normal service will be resumed ASAP.

A correction.

It has been pointed out to me that it was Dr. Johnson, not Swift, who first uttered the original 'patriotism' quote.
Of course.
It doesn't make Cameron any less of a smooth-faced posho twat, however.

more on politics.

Apparently, David Cameron feels that he 'can turn this country round'. I bet he does - turn it round so he can screw it up the backside, like the last time the Tories were in. The Conservatives have apparently identified six key areas to campaign on, beginning with the deficit. What they do not have is any clue of a coherent political or economic strategy. And you can tell Cameron is a man out of ideas when he says:
"It is an election we have a patriotic duty to win because this country is in a complete and utter mess, and we have to sort it out."
A patriotic duty?
To paraphrase Swift, 'Patriotism is the last refuge of the politically clueless'.
Cock. Total cock.

Headline of the year?

Even though it's only February? And yes, it is for real:
Butler Handjob gives Wheatley Semi
It's about someone giving away a quarter final by handball, of course. What did you think?

Ill.

I feel terrible. I have a rough bloody cough and no energy whatsoever, plus blocked up ears. Just thought I'd give it a mention.

The Tory Imagination Isn't Working....

as I said in my last post, devoid of ideas.
Forgive the crappiness of my picture editing skills.