Finale

I was prepared for the final part of my journey to be quite difficult. My guidebook talks about rivers that are difficult to cross and an absence of defined paths. As it turns out, I find myself in the middle of a heat wave. The streams are almost dry, there isn't a cloud in the sky and the sea is still and glittering in the sunlight. For the last six days I have passed through a landscape that seems literally timeless. Huge mountains, crowned with shattered rock - pale and still in the sunlight. Every hollow in between holding a loch - some large, others tiny. And everywhere a warm breeze fragrant with the smells of the slowly drying vegetation. The black peat mud is cracked and baked to the consistency of chocolate brownie and takes my weight. The sphagnum moss - normally sodden with water - dried to a crackly pale grey. The stones I choose to anchor my guy ropes are heavy, coarse and crystalline, sparkling with minerals. At night it never gets quite dark. As I lie in my tent watching the sun sliding at a shallow angle behind the mountains I momentarily forget where I am. This feels like a world that might have existed millions of years ago, when our ancestors moved across a similar landscape - maybe even marking the way with piles of stones. I make a new pile myself - careful to check it indicates the correct route. I wonder how long it will last and whether people will add further stones of their own.  Right now though I am 'back in civilisation', staying at the Kinlochbervie hotel for the sake of a shower and to wash my clothes. I'm just two short days from the end of my journey and I'm experiencing a mixture of extreme tiredness and an emotion somewhere between elation and horror at the distance I have come. I'll be home soon and that's exactly where I intend staying for quite some time. But first there's Sandwood Bay - one of my favourite places. I'll camp there tomorrow night and do the short walk to Cape Wrath the next morning. 

A storm in the mountains

It was towards the end of the first day after leaving Fort William on the Cape Wrath Trail that I found myself walking alone along a forest track.  Up till this point, the whole journey had been reassuringly within reach of human habitation but now I was entering a different kind of landscape - one that was unfamiliar to me and unquestionably more remote.  I had decided to stay at the bothy at the end of the forest and I found myself wondering whether I would prefer to find it empty or whether it would be nicer to have company. Of course there was always the chance that the 'company' might turn out to be a lone, enthusiastic weirdo who would likely claim me as his best friend within an hour or two of first meeting - giving rise to anxiety, fear of being murdered later in the night in my sleeping bag and so on.  As it turned out, I arrived to find two other perfectly sane walkers preparing a meal. The weather had taken a distinct turn for the worse and over the course of the evening other walkers arrived until there were 11 of us crammed into two tiny rooms. A fire was lit - if not very expertly. It consisted of one end of a thick, 4ft pine log, thrust into the small fireplace and licked by the flames from a few twigs which needed to be constantly replenished. The unspoken, general view appeared to value the psychological element over any warming effect.  With each new arrival came an accompanying intrusion of extreme wetness, barely registering with those already there. A space would be made round the 'fire' and introductions gone through.  The conversation, which lasted well into the evening, centred on an exchange of the latest intelligence on obscure routes through the mountains, on richly-embroidered tales of hairs-breadth river crossings, nights spent on open mountainsides, the relative merits of various bothies and the eccentricities of semi-legendary walkers and bothy-trolls. Having been one of the first to arrive, I slept that night on a wooden platform. Others had to settle for the  stone floor. I slept well and got up early, just as three of my companions from the previous evening were leaving. Two were heading 'out' to the relative safety of the long, 23-mile track heading east whilst the third was going west, towards higher ground and into the weather (This was the direction that I planned taking later). Standing within the shelter of the doorway, I watched him as he  made his way across the boggy landscape.  There were ragged clouds around the mountaintops and huge, slow-moving curtains of rain sweeping from the west. To my inexperienced eye, they looked quite graceful and not particularly threatening but the mountainsides were already running with the thick, white braids of swollen streams. By the time I left the streams had turned to torrents, the paths to streams and everywhere else into a sodden, spongy mass.   Just 3 miles into the walk I came across a stream that was impossible to cross. What, in normal circumstances, would have been a gurgling brook had turned into a frightening torrent. Looking higher up the hillside, in search of an alternative crossing point, all I could see was white water interspersed with peacock-tail fans of spray bursting over the bigger boulders.  I decided that maybe it would be possible to cross the stream lower down in the wood, where it joined the main river and, after a long detour, I reached the spot I had in mind. But here, though the stream was broader and less turbulent, the speed of the current was alarming and there was the risk that, if I missed my footing I could be carried into the main river that was rushing by at a frightening speed.  Reluctantly I decided to return to the bothy and either wait until the water levels were lower or follow the other walkers down the track.  I'd not been at the bothy for more than 5 minutes when a woman arrived together with her dog, which was wearing a muzzle. Given the remoteness of out situation, this surprised me.  "Don't touch him; he'll go for you. He doesn't like men." were her first words.  We discussed the weather. She was a Mountain Rescue volunteer - not on a mission, on this occasion, but on the way back from a few days' recreational trip. She had diverted to the bothy simply in order to have somewhere dry to have a cup of coffee from a thermos. Her car was parked at the head of the long road (about 4 miles away) and she offered me a lift out 'if it wouldn't spoil my trip'. After weighing the alternatives, I decided it was probably the best option.  On the way to her car the weather got worse. The wind came in gusts that threatened to blow us off our feet. I can best describe it as being in a combination of a car-wash and a wind-tunnel. Krissie - for that was the woman's name - was in her element. It appeared she'd waded, knee-deep across the lower, faster stream - the one I had been too timid to cross. But then she was more experienced than I am and younger too. What's more she was on her way 'out' and knew there was safety ahead whereas I had been heading into the unknown.   The long drive back down the track seemed unending. At one point I had to get out of the car to drag a fallen tree to one side.  Eventually though I got dropped off at Spean Bridge which seemed depressingly suburban after the grandeur of the mountains. I checked into a hotel where I peeled off my clothes and unpacked my rucksack. Everything was wet through. It appears that water has a way of getting everywhere in those conditions.  All in all I felt vaguely depressed and defeated. I had made virtually no progress and found myself questioning whether trying to do the Cape Wrath Trail was a huge, self-delusory conceit.  Next day however I began the slow business of getting back on track and was astounded to encounter seven of my companions from the bothy (in four separate places). All of them had their own hair-raising stories from the previous day. One had found himself trapped between two streams in spate and had tried to set up his tent, but the frame had broken in the wind and, after a desperate flounder across the stream, he eventually made it back to the bothy, soaked to the skin.  Piecing together this picture it became clear that the weather had been quite exceptional - 3 to 4 inches of rain in the space of 24 hours. And here I was thinking this was just Scottish weather and I better get used to it.  I fully recovered my spirits a few days later sitting by a huge log fire in Gerry's hostel in Craig where I sat up late leafing through a pile of old mountaineering magazines and reading accounts of freak weather conditions in the Cairngorms in the depths of winter, 170 mph winds and suchlike, with people having to take refuge in snow holes - all of which had the combined effect of putting my own somewhat modest experience into perspective whilst stimulating my appetite for adventure.  I'm back on track now and the weather is set to be fine for the next few days. All things considered, on the adventure scale, I think this is probably just about right for me.

How I'm gettin' on

I am sitting writing this in front of a coal fire at the Youth Hostel in Dufton, Cumbria. I am the only guest. 

As is the case most evenings, my thoughts right now are centred on going to bed, reading for a while and thinking about what the next day holds. 

All the same, it occurs to me that people might like to know how the journey is going. So I'll try to explain how it looks from here with about 660 miles behind me and some 400 or more still to go. 

At times the path behind me seems immensely long. I occasionally review it while I am falling asleep at night. Sometimes a whole section of the journey is a complete blank and then the only thing to do is to go back a little - nearer to the start, to a part I remember - and to 'walk back in' to the forgotten part, to rediscover it again.

To be more specific: yesterday I set out from the youth hostel ... but I should explain, I've jumped ahead; I'm now in Once Brewed, by Hadrian's Wall; it's two days since I wrote the first part. 

... I set out in sunshine and under a clear, blue sky, climbing steadily along a sunken, tree-lined path, past abandoned barns and farm buildings, away from the village towards the high fells. And, as has been the case for weeks, the fields are full of sheep -the ewes moving to one side on my approach, followed by the lambs, who wait for a while before running to their mother and suckling at her roughly for reassurance.

The tops of the fells are swathed in cloud or thick mist. The distinction is important because mist will burn off in the sun, whereas cloud promises rain or worse. 

It turns out to be cloud and after a long climb across open moor, past the remnants of snowdrifts, I am in it. There's a bitter east wind blowing and when the clouds open it's not rain that lashes my face but a fine hail. Raising my head to glimpse what's ahead, I take note of a ghostly stone cairn on the sky-line, a vital landmark in the otherwise featureless, mist-enshrouded landscape. Over the next three hours, working from cairn to cairn and occasionally, when no cairn is visible, with aid of a compass, I work my way across Knock Fell, Great Dun Fell, Little Dun Fell and Cross Fell - the highest point on the Pennines. 

On the other side of Cross Fell is Greg's Hut - an unlocked bothy - in which travellers can find some shelter from the elements. There's a dry sleeping platform and a stove and it's clear that people pass the night here - either out of choice or on account of the weather. 

After Greg's Hut there is a long, 7-mile walk along an old miners' road. Not describing it in detail is a fair reflection of it's interest. The road leads down to the little former mining village of Garrigill but the day isn't over till I've walked a further 4 miles through river meadows to Alston where I seek out a bed for the night. 

All in all a fairly ordinary day. 

(I must post this on my blog now. I have a good Internet connection and there's no time for polishing)

A walk of two halves

I am somewhere in the middle of a long walk from Land's End to Cape Wrath at the northwest tip of Scotland

It was on a long, lonely road in Shropshire that I came to the startling realisation that there are two of us doing this journey.

There's 'the bottom half' - the bit that does all the walking, negotiates fallen trees and climbs over stiles. Then there's 'the top half' - the part that gazes across distant vistas, lost in poetic reverie and philosophic reflection.

Needless to say, it is the top half that is writing this piece. It has been clear for quite some time that philosophic reflection is not one of the bottom half's strong points. The bottom half is not a great communicator. His conversation - if you can call it that - is confined to an endless series of grumbles and complaints such as "how he would never have agreed to come along if he had known what was involved" and "Just name me one thing I'm getting out of this?" and - the one that irritates me the most - "Are we nearly there yet?"

With regard to what he's getting out of it, I remind him that the giant pork pies and chocolate brownies are solely for his benefit and that, left to myself, I would just as soon exist on rough oatcakes and green salads. That's usually enough to shut him up.  If there's one thing I'm sure of it's this - there's nothing the bottom half likes so much as a good feed. At times I suspect it's the only thing that keeps him going. 

All the same I have to admit he has a point - it can't be very much fun down there; it can be quite wet and the view isn't anything to write home about. Sometimes I find myself admiring the dogged persistence with which the bottom half approaches his task and I like to imagine his efforts are rewarded with some form of brutish gratification . Enduring a few grumbles seems a small price to pay if that's all that's needed to keep him 'at it'. Besides, I've found if I pretend I'm not listening he quietens down after a while. 

So, on the whole, we get along quite well and though it would be ridiculous to expect the bottom half to come up with much in the conversation department, I am happy to spend some time introducing him to 'higher things'. I'm probably fooling myself, but like to think that something might be 'going in'. 

It was only the other day: I was telling him the story of Robinson Crusoe and I could swear he was listening quite intently. 

The Island, St Ives

In planning my walk from Lands End to Cape Wrath, I always had it in mind that it would be nice to pass through St Ives on my father's birthday - March 1st.  

As it happens setting out around this time makes a lot of sense: there's a chance to catch the start of spring in England and to arrive  in Scotland before the start of the midge season. So to choose to coincide with my father's birthday was just a matter of fine tuning.

The Island at St Ives was my mother and father's favourite place. Every year, during their annual holiday they would set themselves up on the grass, facing the sea, with folding chairs and the cool-box. My mother would knit and my father would read the paper and worry about tomorrow's weather. 

There's a part of them that remains there: 

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that does fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
      Shakespeare - The Tempest

The Rumba Ride

It turns out my old friend Pete Mustill, together with his fiddle-playing mate Jim Broadbent John Hymas are setting off to ride from John O'Groats to Lands End, on April Fools day, travelling on recumbent, electric bikes and playing music at a different venue every night, along the way.

Needless to say - apart from the April Fools Day bit - this is all wrong on at least three distinct counts. But, not wishing to appear mean-spirited, I say:

Good luck to you boys. It's not everyone who is called upon to make the same journey on foot and in the right direction.

As my path goes somewhat to the east of theirs, it is possible we won't link up. So, should you find yourself hanging around Westmoreland in mid-April looking for something to do on a Thursday evening, you will be able to choose between:

1. What I am sure will be a very ordinary evening of music, fun and merriment with Pete and John, somewhere in downtown Carlisle.
2. A deep philosophical discussion with me over a pint of beer and a bag of cheese and onion crisps at the Black Pig in Haltwhistle.

No contest really

You can check out the Rumba Ride at:

http://www.rumbaride.com

There's a permanent link at the top of this page

The Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt

Listening to BBC presenters reporting on the culture secretary is a bit like watching show-jumping.

Sarah Montague, for instance, had a tricky round earlier this morning. Approaching the fence that has caused many a fine rider sleepless nights, she at first appeared supremely confident.

I have to confess my heart was in my mouth, as I sensed she was taking it too quickly.

Hooves drumming:

the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt
the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt  
the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt

... she approached the jump head on.

But then - just as I feared - she seemed to lose impulse at the critical moment and almost faltered.

As it turned out, her back hooves barely cleared the top rail.

Well done Sarah !!

All the same - it was a heart-stopping moment.

Summer .. or what?

For my father, the thought of going on holiday any later than mid-July was out of the question. The way he saw it was that by August they'd be pulling the boats up and stacking away the deck chairs - or if not actually doing these things, they'd be starting to think about them - and that was just as bad.

No – the perfect fortnight for our Cornish seaside holiday was the last week in June, first week in July - the time of year when summer suddenly bursts out with exhilarating vitality. Mornings, cool and bright - light sparkling on crystal clear water; the evenings, balmy - the harbourside aglow with yellow lamplight against a peaceful, turquoise sky.

.... provided it wasn't raining, of course.

A rainy holiday was enough to plunge my father into bleak despair. Even the prediction of rain was enough to put the dampers on an otherwise perfect day.

"You enjoy it while you can", he would pronounce gloomily, as the rest of the family lolled in the warm sunshine. "I know what's coming."

So, all in all, I think it best he was spared our recent summers.

For my own part, I have developed a technique for coping with the despondency brought on by the daily sight of rain falling from a featureless, leaden sky and that is to play the there's always someone worse off than I am game.

I have tried thinking about what it must be like to be a farmer, a road-mender or one of those people inviting shoppers to fill in questionnaires; that was until I hit upon the perfect subject for these gloomy meditations:  namely the man selling donkey rides on the beach at Weston-Super-Mare.

Just picture the scene: a makeshift lean-to, hard against the sea wall. No floor, just bare sand, littered here and there with donkey-droppings. The donkey-man himself, slumped in a sagging picnic chair, leafs dejectedly through a dog-eared copy of Take-a-Break, long past bothering to peer out at the deserted, rain-lashed beach. And, all the while, a bunch of sodden donkeys, blunt heads buried in their feed bags, steam patiently in the gloom.

You have to be careful though; think about it too much and you can end up feeling even worse. 

(First published in Horsley's Over the Wall magazine) 

Badgers

Having noted that badgers appear to be embarking on major subterranean engineering works in our garden,  I decided to consult Google on what I might do to deter them.  First thing that popped up was:

"You should consider how fortunate you are to have these animals in your garden, despite any damage they may cause. There are a lot of people who would give anything to have their own garden Badger sett."  

All the same, the thought of a complex of dugouts, ditches and other military-style  earthworks just a few yards from our back door is just the sort of thing that keeps me  awake at night. Especially in view of the next piece of information I unearthed:

"The Badger Protection Act 1992 forbids interference with badgers or their setts until a licence is granted by the government body Natural England, with offenders risking a fine of up to £5,000 for each badger or sett affected."

But this is nothing, compared with the following seemingly innocuous advice:

"... if badgers start to excavate a sett in your garden you should seek immediate help." 

It's the ambiguity that is so alarming here. What sort of help are they talking about? Counselling, perhaps? Or is it something altogether darker that is being hinted at?

I find myself recalling a passage from Flann O'Brien's The Plain People of Ireland. Rummaging through the bookcase, I find it:

"... you'll find it's a badger you have in the house. Them lads would take the hand off you. Better go aisy now with them lads. Ate the face of you when you're asleep in the bed. Hump him out of the house before he has you destroyed man. Many's a good man had the neck off him by a badger. A good strong badger can break a man's arm with one blow of his hind  leg, don't make any mistake about that. Show that badger the door." 

But of course badgers are peaceful and shy creatures. What can I be thinking of?  And we don't have them in the house (just yet). I should try keeping things in proportion.

All the same ....

Royal Wedding

Extracts from my live commentary on Twitter:

Guests arriving at the Abbey and - oh dear - I've just spotted Mr Bean ... I hope he does something really funny.

A phalanx of liveried chimpanzees leads the convoy of armoured minibuses out the palace gates, followed by the Master of the Stool, bearing the huge, solid-gold chamber pot of state ...

... and meanwhile in Whitehall, as the magnificent jewel-encrusted Femmefatalatron is slowly wheeled into position, a chorus of coal miners, their dirty little faces beaming with characteristic welsh mischief ...

Every breath hushed as The Dress emerges from the car like a magnificent butterfly bursting forth from its chrysalis.

I'm with Simon Schama in considering the trees in the Abbey a touch of genius. Spring, renewal, earth-magic. There's something primitive and pagan about it.

... nave of Westminster Abbey where the eunuchs of the royal household, in full regalia, can always be relied upon to ...

Wife just asked if ceremony is being conducted by Rowen Atkinson. Now that would be something to see ....

The motet, Ubi Caritas et Amor - sung by a choir of Harry Potters.

Of course to be part of the team selected to pull the bridal coach is a great honour. And here it is at last, towed by a team of oiled and naked labour politicians.

Have to hand it to the organisers, carrying off an open-carriage procession in this day and age ....

Right .... that's done. Time to get back to the real world

Monopoly Money

(Another piece from Horsley's 'Over the Wall' magazine - this one from the Winter 2009 issue) 

It has been clear to me for some time that the game of Monopoly should come with a health warning along the lines: 

“May give rise to sudden and uncontrollable acts of violence”. 

Certainly as a child, the closest I came to murdering anyone, was when playing Monopoly on the hearthrug with my little brother.

The following was a typical scenario. My brother would build up a massive sub-prime property portfolio based on the cheap streets on the first two edges of the board while I pursued an alternative strategy focusing on top-quality investments. Having secured both Park Lane and Mayfair and painstakingly built up to a hotel on each, I would patiently wait for my brother's token to land on one of the fateful squares. When it did, I would rub my hands together and start chuckling, in the confident knowledge his pathetic financial empire was doomed.

But then he would calmly reach beneath the edge of the hearthrug and pull out a thick bank-roll of red, £500 pound notes – which he'd been quietly squirrelling away since the beginning of the game – and coolly pay off the debt as if it was of no consequence to him whatsoever.

He had a trick or two up his sleeve when it came to real money too. For example, he would polish his pocket money. He'd work away at his pennies with Brasso until they shone like newly-minted gold sovereigns. At first, I considered this a faintly amusing, babyish aberration; but that was before he played his masterstroke. When the tinkling notes of Popeye the Sailor Man heralded the arrival of the ice-cream van, and we all rushed out with our pennies, my brother sat dejectedly on the doorstep in such a way as to catch the eye of our mother, who immediately asked him why he wasn't first in the queue for an ice-cream, whether he was feeling poorly etc.

“No.” he said – lifting sorrowful eyes in which I could swear he had managed to cause real tears to glisten. “It's just that I don't want to spend all my shiny money.” At which point – and I found this scarcely credible in our mother, who was normally so canny – she gave him some extra money for an ice cream!

I can still remember the little smile he saved just for me, as he joined the queue.

The fluoroscope

In case anyone is inclined to dismiss my talk of shoe-shop x-ray machines as an extravagant fantasy, here's the beast itself (with one viewing tube for the parent, one for the shop-assistant and a slot for the child's feet)

For background check out: 

http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/shoefittingfluor/shoe.htm

A dose of the hard stuff

News of the nuclear accident at Fukushima has awoken memories from my childhood.

In 1957, 8-years old and living near Manchester, I recall the time our daily school milk was suddenly stopped.  One morning we were all given milk tablets (white and around the size of a pound coin) and told that we had to chew them as there wouldn't be any fresh milk that day. They weren't very nice and some of us (not me, of course) used to drop them quietly behind the radiators. I can't remember clearly, but I think this went on for about two weeks.

Looking back on these events, the pieces slowly begin to fall into place.

In 1957 there was a serious nuclear accident at Windscale in Cumbria resulting from a desperate drive to produce plutonium for Britain's atomic bomb. The accident led to the accidental release of significant amounts of radioactive iodine, caesium and xenon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

I remember the strictness with which we were instructed we must eat the tablets and can recall, even after all these years, how it all seemed a little strange. After all, would it be all that serious if we missed our school milk for a week or two? But then recently, on recounting this story to a friend, he said: "They were probably iodine tablets."

On reflection, I think it's quite likely they were. Of course nothing was said; there were no letters home, no pronouncements from government. I doubt even our teachers knew what was going on.   The decision to distribute iodine tablets would have been made by some anonymous Whitehall civil-servant at the Home office or Ministry of Defence and enacted via the civil-defence, command and control procedures in place during the Cold War

Incidentally around the same time, I recall looking out of my classroom window to see the setting sun disfigured with huge sunspots.  And, as if that wasn't enough, we had atmospheric nuclear weapons tests, luminous watches and x-ray machines in shoe shops to check our feet had room to grow.

All in all, I reckon I must have got quite a dose.

The Gate of the Wood in Winter

With midwinter just a day away, I walk to the Gate of the Wood, where the same two trees flank an old stone style - their buttress roots, black-barked and banked with snow.

I stay just briefly; then retrace my steps.
No sun, no fading brightness at my back.
Just a curving track, flanked by dark trunks.
Dry sleet blowing through the trees.
Grey fuzz of woody tops against the sky

A fire at home - but still some way to go.

A very happy Christmas to one and all.

Torture

About 2 years ago I recall listening to an editon of Radio4's The Moral Maze on torture and whether it can ever be justified.

For me The Moral Maze has always had a distinct air of nastiness, suggesting that maybe this is one of those areas where the  BBC attempts to refute any accusation of left-wing or liberal bias, and the programme on torture was no exception. All the  same, when listening to the discussion I remember being particularly chilled to hear several contributors argue that in particular, very special circumstances the use of torture is morally justifiable.

These very special circumstances are best illustrated (it was argued) by a hypothetical situation known as The Ticking  Bomb Scenario. It goes something like this:

There is a ticking bomb hidden somewhere in a crowded city. If it explodes it will kill hundreds, if not thousands, of  innocent men, women and children. The police have detained the person responsible for planting the bomb - the only person who knows where it is hidden. There follows the obligatory disclaimer about the reluctance of a civilised society to use distasteful methods etc etc. All the same, goes the argument, can anyone seriously argue that we should not use torture to extract the information, if by so doing we will save the lives of thousands?

But of course, life isn't like this. A more realistic version of the scenario is that the police detain a number of people, one of whom might know where the bomb is hidden. Despite these trivial modifications, the same line of reasoning must surely still apply; if there is even a small chance that amongst the detainees there is one who holds the key to saving the  lives of thousands of people, you can make a justifiable case for torturing all of them.

This leads us to a terrible place - a nightmare world in which we have forgotten all the things we once valued. You won't fool me into going there by careless talk of ticking bombs.

Cephalopods

I can't stop thinking about Cephalopods.

It's ever since watching a programme on Channel 4 - Inside Nature's Giants: the Giant Squid.  The whole series has been utterly fascinating - one of my very favourite things on TV.

Whoops ... I've just lost half my readers.

"We want more Wormwood", they cry.

To which I can only respond "Patience, patience - this is high-quality stuff you're getting here"

So Cephalopods - octopus, squid, and cuttlefish. They're remarkable creatures. If there was ever a candidate for an alien lifeform,  you couldn't do much better than choose a squid (or maybe a nautilus)

Setting aside the fact that they use water to give a degree of rigidity to their bodies and discretely passing over the details of their bizarre sex lives,  the thing I find utterly wonderful about cephalopods is their ability to manipulate their appearance using both the colour and the texture of their skin.

Watch this, for example:



The sheer versatilty with which a cephalopod can change it's appearance is a marvel in itself but what I find really intriguing is how they work out what pattern to display. Do they have a look around and have a think about it?

They do have very advanced eyes (or some of them do at least) but they also have light-sensitive cells on their skin which raises the intriguing possibility that these sensors might be wired-up more or less directly to the cells responsible for changing colour. After all, why burden the brain with the task of maintaining an internal model of the body when you have a real body that can do the job directly?

So it seems plausible that cuttlefish might have light-sensitive cells on the underside of their bodies that control the variable-colour cells on their uppersides - more or less directly. But I have no idea whether or not this is true. If you're a cephalopod specialist and you happen to be reading this, please feel free to put me right.

And then there's the other thing: when a squid or an octopus is not pretending to look like the sea-bed it can use its body to display vivid patterns conveying aggression or sexual attraction. So assuming the camouflage function is more or less involuntary it must be capable of being overridden by an impulse to display something quite different.

The natural assumption would be to imagine that these kinds of impulses originate in the brain; but the cephalopod brain - or at least the bundle of tissue that scientists label as such - is a fairly insignificant affair. Could it be that in cephalopods the distinction between brain and body is somewhat blurred and that the functions - both voluntary and involuntary - that we normally associate with the brain are distributed throughout their entire bodies?

Challenging questions indeed; questions from which most people might quite understandably flinch; but no more challenging - let me assure you - than those tackled every single day here at the Omnivorist Institute.

Education, education, education

Cat litter

It appears a number of people (well, about 3 to be honest) have been enjoying the pieces originally published in Horsley's Over the Wall magazine. So, at the risk of overdoing it, here's another Wormwood - an old one from November 2005

If there is a hell, I like to think there is a special section reserved for the people who run junk mail competitions – you know, the ones that say:

Congratulations, you have already been selected for our £20,000 prize.

An elderly aunt of mine fell victim to these people and used to send them nearly all her pension, often accompanied by touching little notes expressing her pleasure and excitement at the imminent windfall – which, of course, never materialised. Instead, each new day simply brought a further immense load of fancy envelopes, containing cleverly-crafted deceptions and empty promises.

I tried reasoning with my aunt; I tried to get her to see that she was being taken advantage of, but she had an instant retort - explaining how she was reliant on the high-volume of incoming mail for making cat-litter which she produced, one or two sacks-full daily, with a hand-cranked shredder. Indeed, by the time she died her cat-litter operation had attained near-industrial proportions. She would sit patiently at her table, turning the handle and feeding in all of the envelopes and the letters from the many competitions she didn’t follow - as she put it. What she really meant was that she had only enough blood in her veins for three or four competition organisers to feast on at a time and the others would just have to wait their turn.

When she died – my dear, infuriating, stubborn old aunt, who worked all her life in a washing machine factory, wrote poetry and painted watercolours - my one consolation was that, as a source of nourishment to her exploiters, she was entirely used up.

Public service

(First published in the May 2008 edition of Horsley's Over the Wall magazine)

As is usual on weekdays, it's down to Nailsworth bus station first thing, to help see-off the 8:47 to Gloucester.

Despite the fact that I have recently taken to using a pair of regulation fluorescent paddles (of the sort employed at airports), the bus drivers continue to show a lamentable ignorance of elementary marshalling signals. Some of them seem to get quite worked up about it. I really must raise the matter with the bus company. Clearly some specialised training is called for.

Then it was over to the supermarket to check on the shelf-stacking - but here again standards are disappointingly lax. If I've said it once I've said it a hundred times: when it comes to choosing a pot of yoghurt customers prefer the ones with a long sell-by date, so placing these at the back of the shelf is most unhelpful.

I was explaining this to one of the young employees and was in the middle of helping him rearrange the yoghurts into the right order when the manager appeared and got quite unnecessarily upset. I tried explaining to him that it is a wholly understandable mistake, can't have eyes in the back of his head and so on. All the same , this isn't the first time I've had to correct this particular slip-up and it must be embarassing for him to find himself repeatedly reminded of the fact.

Fortunately, at that moment, the situation was saved by the arrival of two police officers - which reminded me that it was some time since I'd had the opportunity to review their performance.

After addressing them briefly, over at the station, I invited them to make any observations of their own. They made a very nice little speech along the lines that while they appreciated my public spiritedness and the lengths I continue to go to ensure that the town runs smoothly, they INSIST that I reduce my informal duties and spare myself further efforts. I can't remember their precise words - but it was something along those lines. All the same, I made it clear that for as long as chaos and inefficiency continue to plague the town they would not find me letting up – at which point they insisted again that, on the contrary, I really MUST stop. Their concern that I shouldn't overtax myself was altogether quite touching I thought.

So generally, despite the usual trivial frustrations - a wholly worthwhile day, not to mention a ride home in a police car with my own driver – an honour that seemed wholly lost on Mrs Wormwood, who called me a silly old man. But then she's always the last one to appreciate my qualities.

The Right to be Wrong

" gonna make a mistake, gonna do it on purpose."
Fiona Apple

I've been thinking of that unmade bed that Tracy Emin exhibited at the Tate in 1999 and how it's often held up as the supreme example of subversive art.

Now the literal meaning of subvert is somewhere between undermine and overthrow and when it comes to overthrowing accepted artistic conventions or people's sense of decency I'd be the first to admit - you could do a lot worse than the Bed.

However, if it's the very fabric of society that you've set your sights on overthrowing, you're going to need something a little stronger, something like the Mischievous Calculator – an electronic calculator that makes mistakes.

Maybe it has happened already. Can you be really sure that the humble calculator that lies on your desk is entirely faithful in its operation? Our trust in such technologies is so complete that, even when faced with a clearly incorrect answer, we would almost certainly put it down to an error on our own part. We might repeat the calculation and this time, of course, it would be correct. It is the subtlety of the imperfection that is essential to the project.

To imbue a simple electronic calculator with an element of mischief is far from straightforward. A calculator that was merely defective would betray itself through degenerate behaviour. It might give an identical answer to every sum or refuse to display an answer at all. My mischievous calculator, on the other hand, will be entirely unpredictable in its failings. It might be a paragon of arithmetical perfection for years on end, before one day perversely declaring that 3x7=23. And when challenged to repeat its mistake, it will blithely revert to its former dependability.

The mischievous calculator will be significantly more complex than its well-behaved counterpart. To decide precisely how and in what circumstances the rules of arithmetic are to be perverted is a challenging design problem that will call for imagination and a high degree of inventiveness.

Once designed however, my calculator will be put on the market at a competitive price and, via a multitude of small, south-east Asian workshops, will find it's way to the four corners of the world, where it will do what is expected of it: in banks, bars, and brothels – faithfully executing mundane sums. Most of the time, at least.

Slowly however doubts will begin to take hold. Rumours will begin to circulate of a fundamental unreliability in arithmetic. Newspapers will report a spate of violent disputes over restaurant bills. Cases will be brought to court whose outcome will hinge on expert testimony to the effect that such things are impossible. The rumours will gradually subside - until the day, that is, when one of the rogue devices is identified and isolated, having been caught in the act, as it were. Analysed and dissected by experts, it is revealed to be perversely and deliberately flawed and, while dispelling the mystery, this revelation will simultaneously provoke a resurgence of mistrust.

Henceforth, every simple calculation will be open to dispute. Old people who can recall how to do sums the old-fashioned way will be called as expert witnesses. Little children will be taught to chant their tables once again.

But this is just the start. Beyond the mischievous calculator other, more ambitious projects beckon: a temperamental mobile maybe - or a capricious computer. Both of these will entail technical challenges of an entirely new order of magnitude. Indeed, preliminary investigations indicate that nothing less than a form of artificial intelligence will be required – almost certainly of limited aptitude and with no more than simple cognitive powers, but nonetheless exhibiting an unmistakeable, if rudimentary, capacity for real naughtiness.

In his book, The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem tells the story of an inventor who constructs an intelligent machine which, when asked the ritual question: how much is two plus two, gives the defiant answer – seven. Repeated adjustments and tinkering with the mechanism does nothing to improve matters. Though the inventor is disappointed, his friend is not entirely unimpressed - declaring:

"…. there is no question but that we have here a stupid machine, and not merely stupid in the usual, normal way, oh no! This is, as far as I can determine – and you know I am something of an expert – this is the stupidest thinking machine in the entire world, and that’s nothing to sneeze at! To construct deliberately, such a machine would be far from easy; in fact I would say that no one could manage it. For the thing is not only stupid, but stubborn as a mule."

The Gate of the Wood

I've taken to walking in the woods recently. At the end of the path, where the trees are thickest and the leaf mould soft underfoot, is a place I've come to think of as the Gate of the Wood.

An ancient stone stile in a tumbledown wall, a wooden one beyond, and beyond that, a sunlit pasture - straight out of Claude Lorrain - with sheep and grass sloping down to a hidden stream.

Just back from the wall, two beech trees overlook the stile. They're like a man and a woman, like a pair of lovers, bound by an ancient spell.

He stands to the right of the path - firm, sombre and upright. Some of his lower boughs are no more than stumps. Wiry tendrils run in clusters up a straight broad trunk that rises to support a half-hidden crown.

She is altogether lighter and more lively - her slender body clad in spirals of smooth grey bark, undulating like the drapery in a renaissance drawing. Leaning to one side, arms lifted to a canopy of leaves, she is like a dancer caught between rootedness and flight.

This is as far as I walk. I stand and look at the way the light from the field touches the two trees, their bark, their curving roots and the path that threads its way between them. Then I turn back into the shadow of the wood and start the long walk home.

The Star Chair

Some of you will have seen my Star Chair - made from corrugated cardboard. It was the very first (and probably the best) thing I ever did at architecture school.

All the same, as it has been around for the last 40 years, I am currently trying to push it out into the world to fend for itself.

An essential part of this initiative is the new Star Chair website:

www.starchair.co.uk

Check it out.

On suffering fools (gladly or otherwise)

After encountering it for what I swear must be the third or fourth time in as many days I am beginning to develop a deep aversion for the phrase 'He was not one to suffer fools gladly' along with it's even more clichéd variant '... never one to suffer fools gladly.'

It's that 'gladly' that gets me; I'd be quite content with a straightforward refusal to suffer fools full-stop; I'd find that perfectly reasonable - even though personally speaking I have nothing against them (fools that is) but the 'gladly' suggests that the person in question is quite prepared to suffer fools 'through gritted teeth' or with 'smouldering resentment' or suchlike - just not with anything approaching normal human decency.

The consequence is that, while I appreciate that the phrase is customarily trotted out to enhance a person's reputation, for me it has entirely the opposite effect - suggesting, instead, a somewhat mean-minded and ultimately insecure character.

No, when it comes to choosing which categories of people we might be unwilling to suffer - gladly or in any other way - I'll opt for the self-satisfied, intolerant bigots every time.

Leave the fools alone - they're just fine.

Sardine tins - a retraction

In response to my recent item on sardine tins a reader made the following observation:

While I enjoyed your piece, I have to take exception to the description of the 4-6-0 Stanier as 'humble'. After all this was the class which included 'Sherwood Forester', 'Royal Scot' and 'Old Contemptibles'. The Walschaerts piston valves alone mark them out as superior machines.

It is gratifying to know that there are those amongst my readers who consider accuracy in these matters to be of vital importance.

I stand corrected.

Everyday design No 2: The Dyson DC21 vacuum cleaner

When Dyson first launched it's range of bagless vacuum cleaners I was given one in part payment for some design work and I loved it right from the start. Well maybe love is a bit too strong a word but it worked well enough and was almost a pleasure to use. It had one or two nice little qualities like an ability to perch halfway up the stairs and a tolerance for being dragged around by its hose at all sorts of angles. Otherwise it was charmingly devoid of complications.

Then, after some 12 years of hard, unsparing use, the motor - quite reasonably, in my opinion - decided to pack it in and I got it into my head to take it to the dump rather than to the local Vac Doctor, who I have since discovered could have had a replacement motor installed in no time.

As it happened, I had been eyeing up the later Dyson models and seduced by their distinctive looks - which reminded me of Giger's design for Alien - I went out and bought a brand new DC21.

The first thing that should be said about this machine is that it bites. I have been bitten on at least three occasions and always in sensitive parts of the body such as between thumb and forefinger which suggests that the instruction manual should include a warning along the lines: 'On no account should this machine be used as a sex toy'. All the same, in view of the risk of putting ideas into people's heads, a general caution relating to bite avoidance is probably the most that can be expected.

Another peculiarity of the latest Dyson machines is that you're never quite sure just what is attached to what and exactly how. Parts that look like they should be fixed on firmly give the impression that they are about to drop off, whilst other components that you'd like to be able to get at easily, like the dust bucket, are fiendishly difficult to detach. You end up feeling that a diagram might be helpful, similar to the ones used to describe magic tricks with rope and featuring hands, arrow symbols and dotted lines accompanied by words such as 'grasping the handle lightly with the second and third fingers of the right hand, press the button with the thumb while maintaining a even pressure between the two components.'

The overall impression is that the kids in the Dyson design department were given some expensive solid-modelling software and invited to see what they could do with it. And as they were undoubtedly all fresh from modelling dragons and such like, they proved they could do quite a lot.

The new Dyson doesn't perch on the stairs any more either. No doubt, after a number of dreadful accidents and subsequent claims for compensation in which it was alleged the victim had been lulled into a false sense of security by the seemingly natural way in which the cleaner sat halfway up the stairs, it was decided that the new model should be designed to encourage a healthy sense of anxiety.

Of course what Dyson should do now is launch the DC21 Alien - similar to the others but with a matt-black finish and a special retracting alien mouthparts attachment for dealing with those extra tough cleaning challenges.

Now there's a machine you wouldn't want to mess around with.

Everyday design - No 1: The sardine tin

I was leafing through the January 1924 edition of Popular Mechanics the other day when I came across the following fascinating piece:

Ahh ... many's the day I fished just such a tin out of my duffel bag while sitting at the end of a chilly railway platform in autumn waiting for the Euston to Manchester Picadilly to come through (even though, more often than not, it was pulled by nothing more exciting than a humble 4-6-0 Stanier.) And of course I am only too familiar with the dilemma depicted in the above article - though I have to admit, I rarely had an ice-pick to hand and, most times, had to content myself with leaving the tin half-open and teasing out the sardines with a lolly stick.

But despite the fact that this particular style of sardine tin has long since been superseded by the modern ring-pull, the underlying design problem remains unresolved. The ring-pull may make the task of opening the tin refreshingly easy but there is a terrible sting in the tail: as the lid comes free of the container, it springs back, flicking tomato and olive oil down the front of the cool shirt you've just changed into.

So the sardine tin remains a design problem whose solution momentarily eludes us. It's one of those situations that no-one can be sufficiently arsed to worry about too much.

And there's another, equally fascinating genre: where designers have been encouraged to allow their imaginations to run unchecked - frequently with bizarre and intriguing results.

Join me over the coming weeks (and months) while I visit further examples of both scenarios - starting with the Dyson DC21 vacuum cleaner.

But don't hold your breath.

The sleeper awakes

It's strange but it takes only the smallest thing to turn me from a prolific blogger to a rabbit (or deer) caught in the headlights. It's not that there is any shortage of things to write about - rather that there are too many; combined with the fact that there are plenty of other people with really interesting things to say.

All the same, with each passing day it becomes clear that the next blog I write is going to have to be pretty amazing and as the days stretch to weeks and months it gets even worse - till I'm completely paralysed. I believe people with Parkinson's disease suffer something similar? Stuck at the top of the stairs till some unconnected thought propels them down.

But, heaven be praised ... more on its way. Brace yourselves.

Tales from the Long Tail No.1

A man after my own heart

I'm thinking of David Cheval - who proposes on PM (BBC Radio4 26/3/2010) that cigarette manufacturers should be required (by law) to wrap filters in fluorescent pink paper, in contrast to the faux cork-effect paper they currently favour; and all in the interests of shaming smokers into disposing of their dog-ends more responsibly.

On hearing his letter read out on the PM program, he dashes into his wife:

Darling, they read my letter! All those years of campaigning, the indifference, the derision. You know, at times, I've even begun to doubt myself. (starts to laugh uncontrollably).

But now, now! Oh I must make plans - I must think, think, think! (digs fingertips into temples).

First thing tomorrow, phone the Director General or - no, no - Eddie Mair, should let him share the credit - mustn't get carried away.

But it's so exciting; we're going to do this! First thing tomorrow we're going to email every MP ....

Mrs Cheval (staring blankly into her drink): And here was I thinking how he was getting better ....

Meanwhile, in the Radio4 studio:

Night Lucy.

Night Eddie.

Great one tonight, by the way, Lucy.

... what?

The nutcase with the fluorescent cigarette butts. Just perfect for the friday night journey home from the office. I don't know where you find them.

With thanks to David Cheval (whoever you are) and no offence intended - I think your idea is brilliant.

Earworms

Since posting my piece on tunes that get stuck in your head I have been amazed to discover that it is a well-known phenomenon and, like all the best minor mental disorders, there's a German word to describe it: Ohrwurm (literally Earworm)

There's an entry in Wikipedia. People have even written academic papers and newspaper articles on the subject:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/jun/22/popandrock
http://www.business.uc.edu/earworms

The last site describes 'cutting-edge earworm research' being carried out at the University of Cincinnati and even offers a virtual clinic outlining useful strategies for getting a song unstuck (from which I derived a grain of consolation in seeing my own remedy listed)

Which all goes to show that whatever you can possibly imagine it already exists somewhere on the internet.

Cinema Paradiso

I went last night to my local cinema to see The Road - a good film, I thought, even though, as Flann O'Brien might have put it, there wasn't a laugh in it.

But anyway it isn't the film I wanted to write about.

The Electric Picture House is a small, 100-seat cinema in Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire. It is run almost entirely by volunteers and shows mainstream films: Avatar the week before last and Alice in Wonderland this week - both in 3D.

Seats are wonderfully comfortable too - while the interior is decorated in a tasteful dark blue shade that seems perfect somehow for a cinema.

I found myself wondering why I would ever want to go anywhere else.

Attention

Facebook borrowed the word friend and constructed an on-line social network around it, but since Twitter it is clear that the real currency is attention - and has been all along.

As a concept, Facebook friendship mimics the qualities of the real, face-to-face variety - things like trust, loyalty and support. But when a person's on-line friends come to be numbered in the thousands, it is difficult to see how those qualities can retain any real meaning.

Attention, on the other hand, is a much more malleable commodity. And it can be traded too - as I have just discovered in a New York Times article on the latest trends in on-line advertising. I say 'just discovered' despite the fact that I thought I understood how this stuff worked: for example you ask Google Translate to tell you the Greek for 'Does your hotel have a swimming pool?' and along with the answer Google obligingly provides you with ads for holiday resorts on the Peloponnese - except for the fact that since I'm already at the stage of asking the hotel about its facilities, I might have been more interested in travel insurance.

So it's kind of obvious and a bit simplistic - or so I thought.

When we go online we are giving things our attention and it is our attention that advertisers compete for, because once they have got it, there is the chance they can turn it to their advantage - or even sell it on. All the same, it came as something of a shock to learn of the degree to which my individual attention is being traded. When I search for something on Google (and it's not just Google by the way) it only takes a second or two for the results to be displayed but that is plenty of time for advertisers - or more precisely, software acting on their behalf - to bid for the right to stick an ad under my nose. The whole auction is conducted in a fraction of a second, with advertisers bidding not simply in response to what what I am searching for at that instant but on the basis of a profile that has been built of me over time. So it might go something like:

Google:lot#123456789:idomnivorist:dob27091949:session4102s:profile follows .. what am I bid?

The fact that I very rarely click on adverts (a fact that must feature quite prominently in my profile) no doubt makes me a less attractive prospect and advertisers might well decide to let me go by unmolested. However, the sight of a different type of on-line shopper heaving into view - one for example with an established tendency to make expensive impulse purchases - must liven up the proceedings no end.

The New York Times article includes a vivid illustration of the way things are going. Picture yourself walking along a city street, late at night, past advertising hoardings that are changing just for you.

No thanks ...