Stalemate

The cup had an endless pattern in mid-blue glaze running around the bright white china; hills and lakes and floating clouds, bamboo huts on little rocky isles with solitary trees, soaring birds above curly-ended boats whose occupants wore pointed hats and stood with sticks or sat and let themselves be sculled along. As I turned it in my hand one hill or island would start to vanish but another would appear from the opposite side, first higher and then lower, and in between them the birds and boats bobbed up and down to keep to their respective places.

I used my other hand to turn the cup completely round to see if one hill might be higher than the others, or one boat have a different set of figures. I paused, wondering why it should be important to me. I took a sip from the cup. "This tea's cold!" I exclaimed.

"Mine is too", said my companion. He was sitting in a chair to my left, dressed in faded blue pyjamas under a tired brown dressing gown. He held his cup in a shaky hand, leaving the saucer on the tea-trolley in front of him.

"Why didn't you say so? Now you've made me have to find out for myself".

"I was going to, but you said it first".

I put my cup and saucer down on my end of the trolley, and he replaced his cup with a slight tremble that made the saucer chime. They floated languidly upon their reflections in the polished wood like water-lillies on a silent pond.

"I suppose one of us will have to go and get some more", I grumbled, reaching for the walking stick that leant against the trolley. "I'd better do it, you're not properly dressed, are you?"

A sudden snatch of birdsong rippled through the room, and then, almost as an echo of the echo, was repeated note-perfect once again, and died away.

"A song-thrush", I exclaimed, but he raised his hand and said "A blackbird".

"You don't know the one from the other", I replied, then saw in his face that yes, he did know, and cared deeply about knowing it.

"A song-thrush would not have sung the same tune twice", he answered, "but a blackbird only sings a single song".

I glanced towards the source of the sound. White lace curtains fluttered quietly, like clouds that would be going if they only had a helping breeze to move them on their way. Behind them, the french windows waited, opened wide to the next sounds that might want to enter.

"The doors are still open", I said accusingly, turning back to him. "Don't you know how to close things after you?"

"But I thought it was you who came to see me", he said as he looked around him. "Isn't this my room?"

"I don't think so. It would be in a terrible state if it were yours. And what makes you think that I would come to see you?"

"I'm not dressed", he sighed, and straightened slowly in his chair. "Alright, I'll close them. Give me my stick".

I picked up the stick that leant against the tea-trolley and felt the smoothness of the light brown wood. "This isn't your stick", I said, 'it's mine".

"But why isn't my stick here?", he said in a puzzled tone. "It must be here somewhere, I couldn't have come in without it". He looked around and then began to fumble in the pockets of his dressing gown as though it had somehow managed to hide itself in them.

He gave up. "You'll have to close them, I'm afraid. I won't be able to get there and back on my own."

"Oh, very well", I said, handing him the stick, "you can borrow it just this once. But don't you lose it or put it somewhere I can't reach. It is mine, you know".

He accepted it, and looked at the handle with a puzzled frown, as though aware that he should have recognised that it wasn't his. He made a movement to get out of the chair, but found that the trolley would be in his way. Sitting back down, he leant the stick against the trolley.

"Here", he said, picking up his cup and saucer, "You just pick up yours, so we can move this out of the way".

I reached out and picked up the stick. "I'll hold this so that it doesn't fall to the floor, shall I?"

"But you won't be able to pick up your cup and saucer, will you?" he asked, putting down his own and holding out a hand for the stick.

"You're doing this on purpose", I said, handing him the stick. I picked up my cup. A fragrance drifted through the room. I sniffed, and said "Jasmine".

"Isn't that a jasmine tree, there, beside the lake?" he asked, putting down the stick against the trolley.

I looked at him, wondering what he was talking about. He had picked up his cup, and was looking at it. I looked back at my own. I could just see the part of an island where a tree sprang out from a rock and stooped to kiss the surface of the water.

"I don't think so", I said, "I'm almost certain it's a willow". I lifted the cup and studied it carefully.

Why does Peanut Butter rot your teeth?

When I was broke in London and living in dingy squats, I tried to stay alive on a diet of wholegrain bread and peanut butter. They were both easy to obtain, didn't need any form of heat to prepare, and didn't go off too quickly. You'll have realised in a flash that I didn't have a cooker or a fridge, smart people that you are.

It wasn't my complete diet, just breakfast and supper. I would splash out on a sandwich or burger and chips for lunch. What other spare money I had went on tobacco, and coffee, two things I couldn't live without.

After a few weeks I started developing tooth problems. I cracked a filling on the wholegrain bread when some of the grains just wouldn't give in. I also had another filling come loose due to the suction effect of chewing too much peanut butter with too little bread.

I didn't have a proper address so I couldn't register with any of the NHS dentists, but London had the free dental surgery near Leicester Square, where you can go and be practiced on by foreign dental students. I went there once, to get the two fillings replaced, and swore I would never go back again. One of the teeth, the one that I had sucked the filling out of, was declared too bad to be repaired, and the student tried to extract it. It was a big tooth, and he got most of it out, but broke off two of the roots and wasn't happy about having another go at getting them out. I wasn't happy about it either, and decided enough was enough.

After another couple of weeks I realised I also had an abscess under a tooth. I knew from bitter experience that no dentist will do anything until the abscess has subsided, so I went back to the Dr Mengele Institute for Dental Surgery and asked if they would give me a prescription for penicillin. No, they wouldn't, they would only perform surgery.

It was the spur I needed to get myself out of the squats and stupid dead-end jobs. I smartened up, got temporary jobs in offices, and after a few weeks could afford to rent a room in a house with an actual legal address. Then I could afford to go and see a proper dentist. The abscess had healed by itself, and the dentist could find no reason for it having formed in the first place. He pulled out the two roots and patched up a couple of other problems.

I had managed to improve my diet, and had gravitated from peanut butter and bread to kebabs and fish and chips.

A few weeks ago, as part of my diet experiments, I went onto a high-fat diet. The logic was simple, since I wanted to get my body to start burning up the pounds of stored fat I had accumulated, why not teach it to digest only fat for a while? As part of that diet, I was eating peanut butter spread into the hollow of celery sticks. When spreading it into the celery became too tedious I started eating it direct from the jar, straight from the spoon. Celery does that to some people.

Two weeks later, I had that old familiar feeling somehwere on the right-hand side of my mouth. Sensitive to heat, sensitive to cold, sensitive to pressure. I took things easy on that side for a while , and dropped the high-fat diet. The abscess went away on its own. The tooth in question doesn't seem to have anything obviously wrong with it, no cracked filling or other reason for the problem to have started.

So what can it be about peanut butter or a restricted diet that causes this? Is it a type of scurvy? Should peanut butter carry a health-warning on the jar?

It's a shame, because I love it. It's something that makes celery bearable, I don't know how I could go on without it.

The outer limits of silicon science

If you spend a tenth of much time as I do hanging around freshmeat and sourceforge seeing what people are trying to use computers for, you could be forgiven for thinking that there's nothing that can't be done on a motherboard. But I've found something.

Nobody has written a cyber version of the Ouija board for computers. Not a serious version anyway. The nearest I found was a 'how-to convert your 2Gb ipod to communicate with the dead'. If only I had an ipod, but I'm not gadget-conscious enough.

So why hasn't anyone got a virtual planchette up for grabs? There's been computerised I-ching programs since BASIC was invented, horoscope programs, even Tarot readings. But something has kept the unshaven coffee-swilling chain-smoking deranged lone programmer types well away from talking to the spirits.

It could be that geeks don't believe in the afterlife. It could be that the Ouija board requires at least two people to make it work properly, and computer programmers are antisocial types who can only communicate by the keyboard and mouse.

Or it could just be that the dead still haven't learnt how to switch on and log in.

Have I got fools for you

It's been gripping stuff on the news last night; Rumsfeld walking the plank, Hilary putting one over Bill, Bush stumbling and stuttering as he tried to claim he'd planned the change the week before but didn't dare give the game away, and best of all, the press managing to fix the result in the Senate.

The BBC web site carried a report that AP (Associated Press) declared Democrat Jim Webb victor in Virginia by 7,236 votes over Republican incumbent George Allen. Official results have yet to confirm a win. So it's a win even before it's official, if the press say so. Is that delicious irony, or what?

Back in Florida two presidential elections ago, the press did something very similar, declaring that Bush had beaten Gore even before the official count confirmed it,(ignoring the fiasco about chads and disenfranchisment for having the same name and colour as convicted felons). This press declaration resulted in the media stating and restating the result and setting it firmly into the expectations of the nation, which several analysts said had coloured parts of the process of trying to appeal the election irregularities. Since it was 'already known' that Bush had won Florida, what was the point in rushing to see if it was really so? It was accepted that Bush must have won because the news breaks must have been based on fact.

Sharp practices cut both ways, you know.

It's going to start happening here before too long, as the TV gears up to getting us watching more 'reality' because it's so much cheaper to make than real drama. Press Red if you believe Tony, Green if you believe Clare. Phone this number to evict John from the house, phone that number to see David and Dog re-admitted to the house next door, text 'MadMummy' if you would like to see Margret Thatcher roaming bandaged-wrapped through Whitehall with a cleaver and a curse in a remake of "The Mummy's Revenge".

I'd rather see Hislop and Merton running the show from numbers 10 and 11. They'd be less likely to fall foul of the press so often, and any cockups would at least be funny. Maybe even choreographed. They could have different guest ministers such as Boris and George every other week for a bit of ritual humilation and carefully scripted ad-libs. If you have to leak something to keep the wheels of government turning, leak it prime-time.

Or why not turn Westminster into Big Brother? Do you want to see Nikki as the speaker? Richard as Foreign Secretary, Jayne as Minister for Culture? Do you want to vote by phone for who gets to sit in the big room at the end of the series?

Fore ! (cough) Sorry, thought we was playing golf, didn't realise you meant the Gulf. Rowan-conkers. It's a medical condition, I swear it. I've got a four-letter from my mum excusing me from politi-git-cal correctness. I'm the effing Pee-Em, Haigh Whaddock-Hunt.

All rise.

Gerrymandering, Sleaze and Corruption?

You ain't seen nothing yet, innit.

I watched the final episode of "The Amazing Mrs Pritchard" last night. I hadn't realised it was so close to its conclusion the last time I watched it. As usual I'm kicking myself for not paying more attention to the TV guides. I've only seen two full episodes, and now I've got to wait for the reruns. This series has to be the best political satire since the Comic Strip lampooned Major and Kinnock all those years ago. I can only hope that seen in hindsight it will be every bit as good again.

Last night's session almost struck an 'Animal Farm' note, half jaded-cynicsym against half accurately-observed human nature. The best-intentioned MP is surely going to be faced with some sort of Faustian question at least once in their career. I was impressed by the presentation of the outcome of making such a choice, distinctly black, not as grey as you might like to think; one fateful seed blossoming into an endless field of implications. Bring on the Grim Reaper, it's time for the harvest festival.

I was cheered to see Catherine, (my favourite character in the series), steered well away from that time-worn cliche of 'career woman gives it all up for the man she loves to have his babies'. And the script writer was right to give her the walkaway at the end of Ben's attempt to bend her to his will; demanding a kiss in public is both childish and demeaning.

Another excellent line from Miranda about the ability of a journalist to never forget a story has me wondering how much of this series might be payback time for a few of the journalists who have felt themselves wounded by the cutting edge of Labour's well-honed 'communication strategy' over the past few years.

But what really prompted me to tell you all that I still slob out in front of the box when I'm supposed to be re-training myself in 3D modelling and Virtual Reality was a little news item I saw today, about aircraft safety. The last full episode of TAMP I watched had a plane crashing onto Walthamstow, not because of terrorist activity, but because a relaxation of safety rules. An had EEC 'harmonisation' had allowed the more recent entrants to the greatest club of all to fly their less-maintained aircraft in and out of the other member states' airspace.

This (actual) news item reports that 'The new European Aviation Safety Agency is an "accident waiting to happen", MPs have said.', and is so frighteningly resonant with the satirical episode that I have decided not only to never accept another contract in London, but to try and persuade my relatives who live there, (there are more like me, you know), to move out to somewhere that hasn't been mentioned by the satirist's keyboards.

Once again, life is taking a cue from art.

Nacht und Nebel

(to softly and suddenly vanish away).

I don't mind the night, I usually find it a comforting time of day. But joined with the fog it is another world, and it doesn't seem right at all.

Sopwith Camels didn't often fly at night, partly because the technology for night flying wasn't sufficiently advanced enough during the First World War, and partly because there wasn't any real reason to go out in the dark anyway. For similar reasons, they tended not go go up when it was foggy either. No-one was doing anything that the aircraft could have usefully observed, interfered with, or assisted. The war was still nice enough to allow each side to get some sleep ready for a new dawn and a renewed vigour to dodge the metal and dig for survival. It wasn't until the subsequent war that each side realised that fighting in two shifts made economic sense by potentially getting the same amount of death and destruction done in half the elapsed time. Of course, once a Camel was up in the air it could always fly into some cloud if it really wanted to know what flying in fog would be like. There are several mythic stories of World War 1 pilots entering cloud never to be seen again.

After my Indian summer holiday spent ghost-hunting in East Kent I have returned to the land of dark wintry mornings and even darker evenings, to a sense of dread, and disappointment.

Dread, because the fog is back, and if there is one thing I fear it is hurtling through the white void without a hint of what is out there ahead. Unlike the camel I can at least slow down and try to take it safe; I have no minimum speed below which I would plummet to the ground. But if you drive too slowly, even in fog, you run the risk of vehicles behind you thundering up on you at speed and possibly not swerving or slowing in time, despite your rear fog lights. Lorries and vans seem to be able to drive faster in the fog than cars, maybe due to the higher seating position giving them a cleared view, but maybe because their increased time in the driving seat gives them a sense of false confidence. It is not pleasant to be crawling diligently along in thick white fog and watch the lights swoop into your rear view mirror with menacing intent.

Disappointment, because on an impulse I bought the latest Scissors Sisters CD. I have grown so used to my impulses being correct that it hurts when I get caught out. I'm not going to pour scorn on them or rubbish the album, it is technically very good, but there was none of the fire and quirkiness of the debut CD. I felt cheated, but forgave them for it. I don't think they set out to lower their sights or sucker me in.

It wasn't all bad though, since by another strange quirk of fate I caught the beginning of a series I became fascinated by two years ago. I watched the first ever episode of 'Dead Like Me' the other night. It wasn't a surprise to me, because I had been able to intuit the events based on the subsequent episodes that I had actually seen, but it was nice to close the loop. I have always thought George to be one of the most unlikely heroines, and I suppose a lot of people would find her flat narrative view of life (or afterlife) unappealing, but somehow it stuck with me.

She isn't actually my favourite character in the series, (my tastes tend towards Roxy for female interest), but found myself always eager to see what Rube was going to do next. Perhaps I'm shifting my choice of role-model to someone more realistic, more in line with my own choices and possibilities left to me in life. That has to be a strange admission, stating that a dead man given a second chance is my ideal. I suppose that it shows that I am taking a more realistic view of life, but it also worries me, because another SciFi series that captured my imagination a while back also featured a dead-man-walking character, Kai in Lexx. Is this an intimation of my own mortality? Did those two series prompt me subconsciously to base my blog presence on the ghost of a long-dead fighter plane and pilot from nearly a century ago?

Or had the plane and pilot been grooming me for years without my realising it, building up to the point where they could begin to tell their tale to the modern world?