What goes up...

is often a lot of hot air. In my mind I soar like an eagle, but my friends say I waddle like a duck.

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Location: No Man's Land, Disputed Ground

Flights of Fancy on the Winds of Whimsy

Friday, September 21, 2007

My Swearing Lady

An adaptation of the work by George Bernard Shaw, disgracefully condensed, expunged of all sissy characters with no significant role, de-bowdlerised, and presented for the wearers of the emblem, by The Sopwith-Camel.

(Opening scene, the camera tracks up a flight of stairs following Eliza Doolittle, who follows Mrs Pearce up towards the first floor landing. Both women climb the stairs in synchronization, showing alternately flashes of left stockinged and then right stockinged calves over patent leather ankle boots. Camera halts just behind Eliza at shoulder-level as Mrs Pearce knocks on the door, then turns to look at Eliza with disdain.)

Cut to Professor Higgins' study, where the Professor and Colonel Pickering look up.

Professor Higgins "Do please come in, Mrs Pearce."

The door opens and Mrs Pearce's bosom enters. She struggles to keep Eliza from ducking past her rump into the room.

Mrs. Pearce " Professor, there is a young, um," (pauses for a distinct moment), "woman, who claims she has been invited to visit you."

Professor Higgins. "Ah, the swearing flower girl, I believe. Yes, Mrs Pearce, she may enter."

Close up on Mrs Pearce's disapproving face as she steps further into the room propelled by an eager Eliza.

Pan to follow Eliza as she looks around the room.

Eliza "Gor blimey, right fuckin' posh number you've got here, innit, ya cunt."

Cut to a shocked Mrs Pearce, clapping her hands to her ears.


Pan back to Professor Higgins "Quite, quite." (Turns) "Colonel Pickering, please allow me to present to you Miss Eliza Doolittle."

Colonel Pickering (bowing slightly) "Charmed, m'dear."

Eliza (curtsey's) "Too fuckin' right, mate."

Professor Higgins, to Colonel Pickering "Well then, Pickering, here's a challenge, one hundred guineas says I can have this foul-mouthed little creature of the gutters talking like a true-blue lady at Ascot in just a fortnight."

Eliza "Oi you fucker, I ain't foul, I washes me mouth out every fuckin' morning and every fuckin' evening, cunt!"

Colonel Pickering (shaking Professor Higgins' hand) "You have a wager, my friend, and I have to say, you've got your work cut out. Oh Good Lord, your woman's taken a turn."

Pan to Mrs Pearce as her eyes roll up and she swoons to the floor.


Professor Higgins "Don't worry, old man, she often has these little spells, probably over-done the lacing again. Just wave something from a bottle under her nose, it usually perks her up."

Camera follows Colonel Pickering bending over Mrs Pearce, loosening any laces he can find, then pans back to Professor Higgins taking Eliza by the arm and ushering her towards the laboratory door. She turns to look back.


Eliza "Hey mister, yer pervert friend's only groping yer missus's tits, innit!"

Cut to Colonel Pickering glancing up with a guilty look.


Colonel Pickering "Er, can't find the smelling salts, I thought this might be the quickest way to arouse her, I mean, bring her to her senses."

Professor Higgins "You're a brave man, Pickering. Do join us in the laboratory when you're ready, I should like you to observe the process."

Colonel Pickering "I'll be with you in a moment, just as soon as I've checked on Mrs Pearce."

Camera shot of Professor Higgins and Eliza as they leave and the door swings closed. Pan to Colonel Pickering and Mrs Pearce, who has just opened her eyes. We watch as she glances down to see her bosom loose, and then looks quickly back up at Colonel Pickering, suspicion growing on her face.

Colonel Pickering "Um, you see, as you fell, the doorknob caught your dress and pulled it off. I was just trying to fit everything back into place."

Fade quickly to

The inside of Professor Higgins' laboratory. Eliza sits in a chair with her wrists secured to each arm with leather straps. Professor Higgins is bending over her, doing something with a pair of wires, while Colonel Pickering sniffs a decanter suspiciously, and then takes a sip.

Eliza "Oi,cunt, what the fuck do you think you're fuckin' doing to me fuckin nips?"

Cut to Colonel Pickering shuddering slightly, then taking a deeper drink.


Professor Higgins, straightening up. "Eliza, let's try calling them areoles, from now on."

Eliza "Now you're fuckin avin' a laugh, innit. Me ear'oles is either side of me fuckin' 'ead, and you can stay away from any of me other 'oles as well, cunt. I'm a good girl, I am."

Professor Higgins "Of course you are, Eliza, and in this instance, good is as good is taught. Now then, just a little bit of calibration. Would you please listen to what I say and then recite it back to me, precisely as you hear it. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain."

Eliza "The fuckin' rain in fuckin' Spain falls mainly on the fuckin' plain, innit, cunt."

Colonel Pickering covers his eyes and with the other hand, pats his wallet reassuringly.

Professor Higgins, turning a polished wooden knob slightly "Fine, fine. Four-tenths." (He flips a lever over briskly beside the dial) "Now then, let us begin. Say it again, my dear, if you would be so good."

Cut to Eliza "The fuckin' " (jumps slightly) "Oooh! rain in fuckin Spain!" (Her voice rises rapidly to a questioning wail as the syllable ends). "'Ey, something just bit me in the tit, innit."

Camera pulls back to Professor Higgins as he says "Not quite, Eliza, just a mild application of the new wonder force called electricity. Now, again, if you would be so good"

Close-up on the dial as we hear Eliza continuing to recite the line, The needle jumps at each expletive, which is followed by a fresh expletive, giving yet another twitch of the needle. Fade down sound.

Cut to outside the laboratory door where Mrs Pearce is kneeling, listening. As Eliza's squeals can be heard through the woodwork Mrs Pearce begins to stroke her left breast through the silk blouse. The camera moves purposefully forward as the fingernail circles closer in, and just as it reaches the position of the silk-covered nipple we fade to black, outside to centre.

Camera opens on Eliza and Professor Higgins standing at the entrance to the Ascot enclosure. Eliza looks around her, very poised and self composed, and we move in for a close-up as she turns to Professor Higgins.

Eliza (She speaks delicately but with a precision and manner suggesting she has never spoken otherwise,) "I feel apprehensive, Professor. It is far too soon, you have rushed me here. I fear that I will let you down."

Professor Higgins "Nonsense, Eliza, you have come here at your own good pace. Have faith in the marvels of modern science, and today you shall vindicate the method of selective aversion therapy."

Eliza "And, I believe, contribute somewhat towards your acquisition of one hundred guineas, dear Professor."

Cut to Professor Higgins' face. He looks mildly concerned.

Professor Higgins "The amount is quite trivial, I assure you. My interest is more in the challenge of scientific application. The money is a mere trifle."

Eliza "So you won't mind sharing some with me, I presume?"

Professor Higgins stiffens slightly. Almost beneath our hearing, Eliza's voice whispers "innit, cunt"

Professor Higgins, pausing for just a moment "Well, shall we say twenty percent?"

Cut to Eliza, raising an eyebrow. Close up of her mouth, just starting to form the letter F.

Professor Higgins "Forty?"

Close up of Eliza looking mischievous, still waiting, still ready with an F.

Professor Higgins "I suppose we could make it fifty-fifty. Less, of course, essential expenditure. Room hire, electricity, leasing of scientific apparatus."

They exchange a knowing glance.


Camera pull-back from them and swing around, keeping them in shot, to show Colonel Pickering approaching, escorting the Lady Eleanor Erstwhile-Jones. Close in slowly on the Colonel and Lady, with Eliza and the Professor left of scene, as the two groups meet.

Colonel Pickering "Good afternoon, Professor, and to your companion." (raising hat). "May I have the honour of introducing the Lady Eleanor Erstwhile-Jones."

Professor Higgins, bowing slightly "I am indeed well acquainted with the lady. May I in turn present to you both Miss Eliza Doolittle."

We watch Eliza and the Lady Eleanor Erstwhile-Jones greet each other and see but do not hear their pleasantries.

Colonel Pickering shakes Professor Higgins by the hand, then looks questioningly towards the enclosures. Professor Higgins nods his head and motions the Colonel. The Colonel turns and offers an arm to Eliza, who accepts it, nods farewell to Lady Eleanor Erstwhile-Jones. The camera follows them as they stroll together into the busy enclosure, then pulls back to Lady Eleanor Erstwhile-Jones, who taps on Professor Higgins' sleeve.

Lady Eleanor Erstwhile-Jones "A quick word in confidence, if I may."

Professor Higgins, nodding, moves closer.


The camera closes on on them. We hear Lady Eleanor Erstwhile-Jones murmer "I was getting out of the carriage today and caught my hem, and I said the F-word."

Professor Higgins raises an eyebrow in surprise. "Did it slip gently out?"

Lady Eleanor Erstwhile-Jones "Volleyed forth, more like. Quite stunned the coachman. How permanent is your method, Professor Higgins?"

Professor Higgins, grudgingly "It sometimes requires a minor reinforcement."

We watch as Professor Higgins opens a pocket book and scans rapidly through it. He snaps it shut. "I could fit you in for an emergency session Tuesday next, perhaps?"

Lady Eleanor Erstwhile-Jones "I am to attend the royal ball tonight, Tuesday simply will not do."

Professor Higgins, offering his arm. "Well, then, we shall have to sort something out this afternoon, shan't we?"

Camera pulls back, then fades to black.


The End

(Innit, cunts).

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Oh No

I had to start wearing glasses a few years ago in order to see what was on the computer screen in front of me, and to read with, in fact, if I wanted to see any detail inside an arm's length. Inconvenient, because I didn't need them to see anything outside that range. But I got my pair of lightweight polycarbonate lenses from the opticians and went through the usual games of misplacing them, leaving them at home, losing them on the train, and discovered that cheap reading glasses from chemists worked just as well. Until recently.

I suppose it might have been the change from sitting at a desk all day long to working outside all the time staring at a range of horizons, but my eyes have begun to change back again, and I found that several times during the past week I had sat down in front of the computer, put on the reading glasses, but then found myself unable to focus on the screen. I assumed that I was exceptionally tired, but after a day's rest on Saturday I was still struggling to focus. When I came across my old prescription glasses during the tidy-up, I put them on and found that they worked perfectly; I could read even the tiniest fonts.

I also remembered why I had stopped wearing them and gone over to cheap reading glasses; the right-hand lens was loose in the frames, and taking off the glasses too quickly resulted in the lens dropping out. After catching it for the umpteenth time I got fed up and asked Little Petal where she had put the gel superglue she uses for her jewelry making. (Which I buy on my company account, making note to self for billing purposes).

It was breakfast time, Monday morning, and I wanted to check the emails quickly before heading off to work. I stood in the kitchen by the sink, wearing the reading glasses to see to drip little blobs of superglue onto the top of the lens over the silly nylon strip that the manufactures felt would be sufficient to hold it in place. My arms were shaking a bit, a result of all the hard work they have been doing lately, and I knew that I should really be sitting down, but my characteristic impetuosity got in the way. I finished, looked at the glue line, and noticed one small blob had just curled over the edge of the lens top and was slightly on the face. I tore off a piece of kitchen roll and tried to brush it away. My hand shook and instead the blob smeared over the upper part of the lens.

Oh no.

I moved quickly to try and wipe the lens clean, and realised after one swipe that not only had it made it worse, but I could feel the tackiness on my fingertips that told me the kitchen towel had not absorbed as much of the excess glue as the adverts suggested it would. I was in danger of becoming attached to it.

Oh no.

I dipped my hand into the washing up bowl and swished it around while asking Little Petal if she had any superglue solvent. No, she didn't. She suggested hot soapy water would remove it before it hardened, so I squeezed washing-up liquid onto the lens and swabbed vigorously with the soggy remnants of the kitchen towel. Nothing happened. She took the glasses from me and tried herself, then gave them back to me, saying I had left it too late for the soapy water to have any chance of success.

Oh no.

So I did the obvious thing, I went on-line to search for methods of removing superglue. The browser window came up, I entered my question, and waited. Nothing happened. I moved to the Linux server and tried again. The browser window came up, accepted the question, and then just sat there saying it was waiting for a response. Little Petal, getting ready to go up to Newcastle for a week, announced that her machine was not getting any answer from the AA travel site. Our broadband connection seemed to have dropped back to sub-dialup speeds.

Oh no.

She set off into the great unknown of roadworks and motorway closures for crime scene investigations, and I set off to work.

So that evening, returning to an empty house, I had to catch up with two people's chores before settling down again to see what could be up with the broadband. Wearing my glue-smeared prescription glasses and consequently seeing the screen through only my left eye, the modem details screen came up with awful slowness. I managed to get the basic details screen to fully display, and noted down the username that it logged into the ISP with, because I had no idea where all the connection details paperwork existed now. Blame the recent tidy up in the office for that. As it turned out, it was the one sensible thing I did in this whole sorry story.

I decided that the momentary power cut the day before might have upset the modem, and simply toggling the on-off switch didn't make any difference, so I used a little piece of wire to perform a hard reset. Then I realised the folly of what I had done. Although I knew the modem's admin username and password I had entered into it two or three years ago I had no idea what the factory default equivalents where, and like the connection details, the user manual was elsewhere.

Oh no.

I knew that the default IP address was not the same subnet as my LAN, so I tried to access it from a laptop with a crossover cable direct into the modem, with no luck. I put the modem back onto the LAN, and noticed that although the link LED as active, there was no LAN LED. A couple of years ago the USB connection in the modem had suddenly failed, and so I realised that the network interface had probably also decided it had seen enough of this world.

Oh no.

Over the road in the stores I knew I had a wireless router, and could only hope that it had an ADSL connection. I fetched it back, and found that it did not. All it had was a WAN port. I wired it up anyway, because I needed a DHCP master to let all the other computers in the room talk to each other. Straightaway I hit a problem; I needed to connect to it by a LAN lead, but the new laptop could sense there was a Wifi connection available and insisted on trying to connect. I powered up the old laptop again and coupled the cables up.

I had just got the browser page up to configure the WiFi router, when the mouse pointer slid up to the top of the screen and over to the right. I pulled it back, and managed to enter three characters into the field before the cursor was snatched away again. The old laptop fault had re-asserted itself, and the normal cure was to leave it powered on for an evening until the cursor got tired of sulking in the corner.

Oh no.

Still determined to restore at least local communications, I plugged a graphics tablet into the USB port and for several minutes fought a determined battle of pointing devices, until I had the WiFi router at least allocating DHCP addresses in the range I needed.

I was following the setup instructions on the configuration CD, which included suggesting that the modem should be coupled up to the WiFi router WAN port, which I did, just out of a sense of completeness. Something caught my eye, the LAN LED on the apparently broken modem was now glowing strongly. I typed in the factory default IP address for it, and was rewarded by the browser inviting me to enter the username and password I couldn't remember. However, I had by now recollected that the installation CD for the modem might be in the archive box, and was right. It was there. The trouble was the WiFI installation phase was not complete, but would not allow me to exit. I ejected the CD anyway, and tried to access the documentation on the modem CD. Windows threw up an error message saying there was no CD in the drive and please to re-insert it. I tried canceling the message box, without success. I tried using Taskmaster to close down the program, without success. I tried to shut down the computer so that I could restart, without success. The message box continued to ask me to re-insert the CD. I re-inserted it, but by now the program had decided to no longer continue the installation, and I was left with a message box that just wouldn't close or do anything useful.

Oh no.

Finally I exercised my right to control of my own equipment with the three-fingered salute issued twice in close succession, and was able to power up the new laptop and connect by wireless to the router, and through that to the modem. Now able to read the CD, I could enter the default username and password, and then went to find the piece of paper on which I had earlier written down the connection username. It was hiding.

Oh no.

So near, and yet to be denied. I rampaged through the room, flinging aside heaps of papers and books still awaiting their new home as part of the tidy-up. Almost despairing, I began to pack away the old laptop of the haunted mouse pointer, and found the details underneath it.

Oh yes.

After getting everything back to normal, I was able to piece together retrospectively how it had all gone wrong in the first place. As part of the tidy-up I had disconnected a Freecom Storage Gateway which I had been trying to use unsuccessfully for a few days. This had, unknown to me, taken over the role of DHCP master, and the network of computers carried on quite happily without it until the momentary power cut had reset the modem, which decided that, as it hadn't been acknowledged as the DHCP master for some time, it was dammed if it was going to resume duties now. As it was, even if I had realised this, I wouldn't have been able to persuade it to start doing it again as I was unable to bring up any of the browser pages in the configuration menu due to the general sulkiness.

And, after finally getting back online and re-issuing my request for help with superglue removal, I found that all possibly solvents would also probably damage the polycarbonate lenses of the glasses. So, in the spirit of 'nothing less to loose', I tried polishing the smears away with Solvol Autosol, and after a few minutes of rubbing, achieved an acceptable result. In fact, a perfect result. It even got rid of an annoying little scratch across the lower face of the lens that I never actually saw when looking through it, but was irritated by the knowledge that it was there.

Oh yes.

And so I'm back to bother you all again.

Oh ho.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Learning curve

The house I've been working on has got awfully busy lately as the proper builders turned up to start erecting the balcony. I concentrated on keeping put of their way while at the same time making sure that there was enough parking space for everybody, and that one team's delivery of raw materials didn't get on the way of another team's working area. I found paintbrushes for those who needed them, gave the use of my ladders to another group who needed to work ten feet off the ground but hadn't remembered that human beings don't float or hover on the breeze, and in between all of the fluffing around, found some peace and solitude on top of the twenty foot tower from which I was painting the fascia boards and gable ends.

From my lofty perch I heard a sharp fusillade of words, something along the lines of "You never ever touch that with your fingers, do you understand?" One of the 'lads' had been cutting up wood on the table saw, and the carpenter had spotted him using his hands to lift the blade guard up out of the way of the wood as it met the blade.

Having a 'lad' as an assistant is a heavy responsibility. You find that you have to think for two, look out for two, and explain everything, including the simplest and apparently most obvious things. I've been in that position in the past, and hated it. It's like being weighed down with a rucksack full of stones and sent out to try and do the same time for a cross-country run.

The apprentice scheme is one of the things that we seem to have lost in this country, and as you'll have gathered from the last paragraph, I'm not about to start wailing and claiming it's the beginning of the end. The worst sort of pupil is a reluctant one, and from what I remember of apprentices, many of them wished they were doing something else. My worst apprentice certainly did.

I was tasked with calibrating some high-voltage test equipment that could deliver lashings of voltage and current for brief periods of time, four hundred kilovolts of it. The job involved attaching test leads to the points from which the lightnings streamers would erupt, attaching the other ends of the leads to a controlled spark gap, and then recording the distance between the spark gaps at which the arc just began to jump.

It was very important to make sure that there was no residual voltage on the spheres before walking in to attach the test leads to them, because even a residual charge of twenty thousand volts left in the giant capacitor banks would be lethal, so the first job would be to go carefully into the walkways between the spheres with a long wooden pole to which was attached a metal hook and a wire, which would first of all be attached to a known earthing point. The hook would be slipped over the discharge point, and after a few seconds irt would be safe to reach up and attach the test lead clip.

I didn't want the apprentice, but I was told I had to show him what I was doing and why I was doing it. So I explained as best I could that the most important thing about any job was to be able to go home at night with the same number of fingers and toes. I explained about lightning, invisible stored charge, and how joining a strong wire between a cable and the ground meant that you wouldn't get a shock from the cable, because it was effectively all part of the ground while the wire was attached.

I put him by the earth attachment point, clipped the cable on, and told him to stay there and watch me. I didn't want him anywhere near the metal spheres and there invisible lurking menace until I myself knew they were safe. I walked through the safety gates, up to the first sphere, and was about to left the rod when I stopped and turned around. The apprentice was standing right behind me, holding in his hand the other end of the earthing wire that was running to the tip of my wooden pole.

He said he couldn't see what I was doing from where I had left him, and he thought that he ought to bring the end of the wire with him, because I had told him to stay beside it.

I took him back to the office and declined to be a mentor on this particular task. I had enough to do looking after myself as it was. The sort of knowledge I was being asked to impart should be taught in a classroom, not in the workplace.

Monday, September 03, 2007

Identity Crisis

I've had to get awfully geeky this weekend, far more than I normally like doing. I've even had to find out the names of some of the bits inside the case. I've had to turn myself into the Spaniel for a few hours, and it's not been a good thing for me.

The Spaniel was someone I sat opposite for nearly two years in my second to last IT job, when I was working as a software tester instead of a coder. Spaniel was a dedicated geek; he was installing Gentoo Linux on his computer at home. Gentoo Linux is something that is compiled all the way from source, not from namby-pamby RPM's that lusers of normal linux distros used. And he was building his second machine completely from scratch, buying a motherboard from one source, a CPU from another, memory chips elsewhere. Most of his conversations with me seemed to be rehearsals of his shopping trips as he pondered which component to buy, or sometimes more importantly, from which company to purchase it. Spaniel had gone through a life-changing moment a few years previously, when he had decided one day to scrap his car, in which he did little more than drive the few miles between home and work, and switch to a bicycle instead, and in a similar manner, stop using companies, or the services of companies, whom he considered where not acting in a manner that could be described as 'friendly to the earth'.

Spaniel talked to me quite a lot, sometimes about the machines he was building, sometimes about the programs he was writing at work, and often about Linux. I did my best to keep up with the conversation, even though I was an old coder who worked on machines called Vaxes, digital dinosaurs. I knew a little about PC's, but had no idea what the different types of memory chips looked like or even which way round they had to go. Looking inside computers was something I just didn't do. When I started off building my first computer, there was no concept of inside, the microprocessor and the meagre memory sat on a circuit board in plain view. The thought of reaching in to a mini-tower and extracting the SIMM or CPU was as gory to me as was the idea of reaching through a slit in the abdominal wall and removing an intestine. I told computers what to do, I didn't care what they looked like inside.

But now, with geeks leaving the stage in a mad rush, I'm having to squelch around in the sticky stuff and get my hands dirty. I can't ask Spaniel, he was knocked from his bicycle last year and left dying in the road. My friend who actually built the machine that I'm now trying to sort out has also turned his back on the world of geek, as, of course, have I. It's ironic that almost the first crisis I face in my new life is one that has yanked me back to the old world.

During my last attempt to escape from IT and find a new career I spent quite a lot of time watching programs on the History channel, and became fascinated by the virtual reality simulations of the past that showed what the buildings that were being excavated might actually have looked like, or how the battles fought by Alexander or the Romans might have felt. I wanted to recreate some pieces of the past as well, the old light railways that had meandered through the byways of England where nobody really cared enough about to spend the money on proper rail connections. There were precious few films of things like the Kent and East Sussex, or the Selsey Tramway, and I thought that it must be possible to recreate the landscape and the railways just as I was seeing on the satellite channels.

I found a railway simulation program, and started to learn how to use it. Fairly quickly, I realised that my policy of using out-dated computers running early versions of Windows wasn't up to the task, and got a PC which ran XP and had both graphics and sound. Because I didn't know what internal components it would need, I went to someone and told them what I wanted to do, and what my budget was.

The machine recently began to make a high-pitched screech while it was running, and then suddenly switched itself off. I tried restarting it, with difficulty, and soon had to accept it wasn't happy. The fan which sits on top of an aluminium heatsink over the CPU was making all the noise, and the machine was shutting down or refusing to start up out of a fear of silicone hell-fire.

And so it was that I sat down last night and had to learn the names of things; my motherboard was an Abit A17, it had a socket-something CPU, it had special fan control mechanisms that meant I had to get fans with three wires capable of telling the motherboard how fast they were spinning, and I had no idea who sold such things. It took me an hour to actually get the fan and heatsink off the CPU in the first place. I'm a bit ham-fisted with small things in tight spaces, but the design of this little plastic clip seemed to be that you had to squeeze it almost to the point where you felt it would break before it would suddenly submit.

Finally, just before midnight, I was able to start wandering around the web, typing plaintive little bleats into search fields, asking for a cpu fan for a socket whatever CPU. I found some at a company that I had used before, when I bought some hard disks to go inside the USB cases and store my growing collections of version of the East Kent Light Railway. I had an account with them and after a lot of digging through old emails, managed to get the welcome message telling me what my password was. I logged in to the checkout and started to try and buy the thing. I then realised that, since I had not bought from them since the year in which I sat opposite Spaniel, my card had been re-issued and I would have to enter in the revised details. So I veered away from the checkout towards 'my account', 'managed my cards', got back in line for the checkout, and clicked on the confirm order button. Up came a screen I hadn't seen before when doing online purchasing. The company who issue my card seem to have introduced a scheme to prevent online fraud, and I was going to have to register with them before I could complete the purchase. I got as far as writing down the username they had chosen for me, and was beginning to make up a password to go with it. And then I flipped.

I have over two dozen username and password combinations for various things like ebay, banking, emails, blogging, my websites, and it's already a nightmare keeping track of those. Did I really want another one, that I was going to use infrequently, and did I really want to keep worrying about forgetting them and having to rush around trying to remember just what variation of letters and numbers I had chosen to try and keep track of that particular account? My head is already struggling to remember the pin code for my card that I use to get cash from the hole in the wall or pay for fuel because other codes and passwords are clustered all around the space where I've stored it in my brain, and I worry about forgetting it almost as much as I worry about someone else discovering it and using it to empty my account.

So I made another life-changing decision. I'm not playing the username and password game any more. I've got enough already. I don't need them in the gardens; you don't have to log in to your shears or activate your fork or prove who you are at the gate to start working. I killed the browser session that was still stuck at the checkout for the online shop, got onto ebay, found a fan from Hong Kong that would probably last for a year and was less than half the cost of the English one I had backed out of buying, used my ebay and Paypal username and password combinations, and committed to buy. But that's the limit now, no more accounts, no more email registrations, I'll manage with what I've already got. And if my credit card company tell me that I am running the risk of my card being used for fraudulent purposes if I don't play their security game, then I'll not use their card; you can't get safer than that.

My new life, in the gardens, is face-to-face. I see my customers, I see my labours, I see the money change hands when the work is done. I visit my bank to pay the cheques and cash in to the account, I walk round the shops when I buy my food and clothes and tools, and I don't have to prove who I am at any of those places. Oh, and I haven't even got around to moaning about the hundred or so spam emails I get each day, have I? You don't get that out in the gardens either. It isn't a Brave New World out there in cyberland, it's a confused mess of exploitation, deceit, and vain promises of safety and security. Our powers that be are more interested in cracking down on people who click on images of child porn than they are on clamping down on fraudsters and virus-writers who are clever enough to use fake usernames and passwords in the first place. There's a new breed of criminal around, and they've realised they're above the law, because the law can't identify them, understand how to deal with them, or, possibly, because jailing a certain type of person seems to arouse a more satisfying response from the concerned public than jailing another type of person. Identity theft might be nasty to those to whom it happens, but it doesn't make the great concerned public scream for blood in quite the same way as deviant behaviour does.

See you in the gardens, maybe.