I have been meaning to write a blog entry on this for a while, but suspect that I'll not be able to sort my thoughts out fully.
Housing allocation is getting to be a major issue for local authorities now. In the era before right to buy, the housing stock was much easier to manage. Now the better stock tends to leave council ownership, so there are
private houses
mixed council owned, and right to buy housing
unattractive council housing that is not being bought.
For councils the main driver, metric, seems to be voids. Until there are a lot of voids, they don't seem to worry too much. However by the time that there are a lot of voids, it is probably too late, too expensive to do very much.
The problem with housing is that it is not just about providing people with a roof over their head. It is about providing them with an environment in which to live. An environment which will support or hinder them, with which they will interact positively or negatively.
Increasingly the junction between housing and police, or housing and social work is becoming key.
Councils have a reduced housing stock, so now far more of the people that they need to place are compulsory placings, and those without special needs, will find their way into private rentals, or simply stay where they are. So there is a far larger proportion of people with no choice to house, the former homeless to house, ex prisoners, etc.
There is always an element of social engineering in housing allocations. I suppose the council expects the good people to exert a positive influence. Too often it is the other way round and the negative influence becomes unbearable.
I think that the local authority needs to recognise that it is not simply in the business of renting out housing, working to the same metrics as any buy to let landlord, looking to avoid voids and ensure occupancy, with no real quality indicators.
Because their client base has changed, their business needs to change.
There needs to be vastly more emphasis on the social reintegration of people.
If the local authority believes that local residents are doing this, then it should pay them to do so. Maybe not directly, but what about a rebate on their council tax, or the provision of extra amenities for all. Put in some former homeless people, then ensure that the local police spend more time in the area, put a community pool in the local school, engage with local community groups. You need to create the sort of deal that the chinese do, a deal that works for both sides, so that it does not need to be tied up with legal paperwork, because no one would want to walk away from it.
Rather than the nimby argument, just put this somewhere else, communities should be offered such a good package that they want it.
Surprisingly Dounreay created a lot of jobs in a remote area, so by and large it was accepted positively by the local residents. With the right package, local communities will accept difficult choices. Local authorities need to treat communities as equal partners and engage with them in a meaningful way, a policy of simply imposing is wrong, imposing and listening, but not negotiating is wrong too, it needs to be a case of reaching agreement on what would be acceptable.
Because local authorities are in the business of social reintegration, they cannot just provide a roof over people's heads and hope that they get on with it. They need to create halfway houses, supported accomodation for far more people. Just as the elderly had sheltered housing, all sorts of groups would benefit from warden assisted housing. In some cases the warden would support, in some they would enforce, in most it would be a light touch that ensured neither support nor enforcement was called for. Bad things happen where no one is looking. The local authority need only have someone on the ground looking, and much will go much better.
These are modest proposals, but will require that local authorities take these issues out of their organisational silos, but until they start looking at the business they are actually in, they cannot deliver. Simply doing what you always did, simply gives you what you always got. Local authorities need to start doing different, and doing better.
Saturday 30 August 2008
thoughts on criminology
I have been reading a criminology Reader, I like to read up on the theory of a policy area when I get started, and a Reader is actually a pretty good way of doing it.
Basically a Reader assembles a lot of key texts into the same book, so that lecturers can simply ask students to get the Reader, and then they can ask them to compare the theories of different writers. Thereby saving the task of hunting down articles in obscure journals.
Well this is Criminological Perspectives - essential readings, by Eugene McLaughlin, John Muncie, and Gordon Hughes.
What do I make of it so far? It is incredibly dense, even for a reader, which obviously will assemble short texts from a variety of writers and times, on a variety of related subjects. In the past I have found readers on Cities/urbanism, a lot easier to read. That said it is useful, just not something that you can casually pick up and read. I rather like the way that reading all these different theories, is like humour, subtly rearranging your sense of what is real, and what you think.
It is clear that criminology is a discipline without compelling paradigms, that is, unlike say economics, there is not an overarching theoretical framework that everyone can at least agree on.
In part this is because it is the subject deals with people, and people are variable. In part it is because, like archaeology, the lens through which the subject is viewed, is a very subjective one. What is crime? Is middle class crime, the same as working class crime, the same as upper class crime. Is an act criminal because it harms others, or because it harms society. Is the undetected crime still crime, what about the unreported crime?
Often people use a discussion of crime as an arena to discuss something else, such as the class struggle.
On the basis of my reading so far, I am struck by the theory that crime is a prioritisation of short term gain over long term costs. Thus the drug addict is a criminal, and any ultimate conviction is not relevant. What is relevant is the ultimate harm to the individual and society. The criminal frame of mind is to live in the present, seeking short term pleasures. Thus drugs and drink associate themselves with the criminal frame of mind. That is not to say that everyone who drinks is a criminal, or that it is wrong to seek short term pleasures. However the theory is that by excessively seeking the short term, failing to apply restraint or postpone gratification, you tend more towards the criminal frame of mind. This intuitively applies to the scale that runs from decent hard working people at one end, to the feckless and selfish at the other, regardless of class or background.
Another problem in criminology is that you tend to assume that everyone operates in the way that you think you do, a sort of extended empathy. However people can live such different lives that we cannot use our own lives as a reference point. For example for those caught up in the gang culture, there are few points of similarity with most of our lives. Clearly this is not a society based on money or the pursuit of money, it is a society based on respect. These are often people who feel that they lack status and respect, and such activity is a way of gaining respect among their peers. The currency is respect and humiliation. Often the behaviour is intimidating just because it is supposed to be, it is supposed to intimidate and humiliate others, because the participants feel that they are humilated by society. When respect and humiliation are the currency, you take what you can when the opportunity presents itself. Are recent muggings really based on monetary gain, or simply the pleasure in humiliating the victim.
But the currency in that culture does not readily translate into currency in the wider society. There is a divide, you might choose to succeed in that culture, or in the wider society, but not in both. You end up deciding which tribe to belong to and which rules to play by.
Of course all the theory in the world is no good if it does not take you anywhere. On the individual level, or the tribal level, how can you change, should you change.
There has to be freedom of choice, we cannot constrain people and compel them to do as we do. However, it is possible to offer better choices. When should we do this? Most criminal activity is caused by people in their teens, most of these people are set on this path earlier in life. So improving the job prospects in an area will not directly affect the cohort you are trying to impact on, except to the extent that it affects their family environment. However improving the schooling in an area, supporting families in the area, will have a much more direct affect.
We need to look at what works, look at people who do well in the area, look at organisations that are decent, families that do well. As much effort needs to go into support for those that are not a problem, as trying to sort out those that are. Their good example, and good work can ripple outwards. Some people will always choose a criminal path, and there might well be little that they can teach us. We need to focus on those that simply run with the crowd, which is always the majority.
Basically a Reader assembles a lot of key texts into the same book, so that lecturers can simply ask students to get the Reader, and then they can ask them to compare the theories of different writers. Thereby saving the task of hunting down articles in obscure journals.
Well this is Criminological Perspectives - essential readings, by Eugene McLaughlin, John Muncie, and Gordon Hughes.
What do I make of it so far? It is incredibly dense, even for a reader, which obviously will assemble short texts from a variety of writers and times, on a variety of related subjects. In the past I have found readers on Cities/urbanism, a lot easier to read. That said it is useful, just not something that you can casually pick up and read. I rather like the way that reading all these different theories, is like humour, subtly rearranging your sense of what is real, and what you think.
It is clear that criminology is a discipline without compelling paradigms, that is, unlike say economics, there is not an overarching theoretical framework that everyone can at least agree on.
In part this is because it is the subject deals with people, and people are variable. In part it is because, like archaeology, the lens through which the subject is viewed, is a very subjective one. What is crime? Is middle class crime, the same as working class crime, the same as upper class crime. Is an act criminal because it harms others, or because it harms society. Is the undetected crime still crime, what about the unreported crime?
Often people use a discussion of crime as an arena to discuss something else, such as the class struggle.
On the basis of my reading so far, I am struck by the theory that crime is a prioritisation of short term gain over long term costs. Thus the drug addict is a criminal, and any ultimate conviction is not relevant. What is relevant is the ultimate harm to the individual and society. The criminal frame of mind is to live in the present, seeking short term pleasures. Thus drugs and drink associate themselves with the criminal frame of mind. That is not to say that everyone who drinks is a criminal, or that it is wrong to seek short term pleasures. However the theory is that by excessively seeking the short term, failing to apply restraint or postpone gratification, you tend more towards the criminal frame of mind. This intuitively applies to the scale that runs from decent hard working people at one end, to the feckless and selfish at the other, regardless of class or background.
Another problem in criminology is that you tend to assume that everyone operates in the way that you think you do, a sort of extended empathy. However people can live such different lives that we cannot use our own lives as a reference point. For example for those caught up in the gang culture, there are few points of similarity with most of our lives. Clearly this is not a society based on money or the pursuit of money, it is a society based on respect. These are often people who feel that they lack status and respect, and such activity is a way of gaining respect among their peers. The currency is respect and humiliation. Often the behaviour is intimidating just because it is supposed to be, it is supposed to intimidate and humiliate others, because the participants feel that they are humilated by society. When respect and humiliation are the currency, you take what you can when the opportunity presents itself. Are recent muggings really based on monetary gain, or simply the pleasure in humiliating the victim.
But the currency in that culture does not readily translate into currency in the wider society. There is a divide, you might choose to succeed in that culture, or in the wider society, but not in both. You end up deciding which tribe to belong to and which rules to play by.
Of course all the theory in the world is no good if it does not take you anywhere. On the individual level, or the tribal level, how can you change, should you change.
There has to be freedom of choice, we cannot constrain people and compel them to do as we do. However, it is possible to offer better choices. When should we do this? Most criminal activity is caused by people in their teens, most of these people are set on this path earlier in life. So improving the job prospects in an area will not directly affect the cohort you are trying to impact on, except to the extent that it affects their family environment. However improving the schooling in an area, supporting families in the area, will have a much more direct affect.
We need to look at what works, look at people who do well in the area, look at organisations that are decent, families that do well. As much effort needs to go into support for those that are not a problem, as trying to sort out those that are. Their good example, and good work can ripple outwards. Some people will always choose a criminal path, and there might well be little that they can teach us. We need to focus on those that simply run with the crowd, which is always the majority.
Diary type entry
I'll just tuck this sort of diary stuff into a separate blog entry, to try and keep things a little neater. After last weekend, the working week has felt a bit of a struggle. Not in a bad way, just that it took me a fair while catching up on my sleep and getting back into a routine after being out on the Saturday night.
Not an incredibly busy week, but pretty steady, I tend to measure these things by meetings, so there were a couple of meetings where I was simply attending/supporting, which was fine. A couple of pretty informal ones where I was just meeting people. And one where I ended up sorting out the agenda and chairing.
This last meeting was our branch meeting, there have been quite a few changes lately, and a few more coming up, so there was a feeling in the air that we needed to get together to discuss. That said, I was not convinced that an informal structure would work, so I pushed for an agenda, and was offered the chance to chair, which I took up. I tend to chair a meeting, in pretty much the same way that I facilitate a meeting. That is, I like everyone to get a chance to speak, and I see it as my role to ensure that the quieter voices get heard, and the louder voices let them. Actually it went pretty well.
I also had a meeting with my mentor, something that has been arranged through work, and had been in the planning stage for ages, but now that it has got going is really excellent. I suppose every mentoring arrangement is different, but I find this a useful sounding board, and having discussed approaches, I then feel committed to actually do what I promised to do. So in terms of personal development, it is a useful motor to get me to try and push myself. The chairing the branch meeting was one of those things, I could have simply sat back, but there was that little voice saying, this is the sort of developmental thing that it would be good to do. If you think you are promotion material, you need to be demonstrating the skills.
I'm applying for another job, which actually looks pretty good, though challenging. However I am not going to die in a ditch if I don't get it. Simply get some feedback on my performance, and try and do better the next time. To be honest I am more focussed on extra salary as something that will impact on my pension, than as take home pay at the moment. Although, like everyone else, money is starting to get pretty tight.
Yesterday, went quickly. By the time you get through the big pile of chores, and walk the dog, and relax a bit, it is time for bed.
Trying to find things that we can watch together with the girls, which currently covers upto a 12 certificate. So yesterday we saw an Outer Limits episode, Demon with the Glass Hand, and Terminator 3. A bit of an opportunity to compare and contrast classic science fiction with a more modern version. For those that have not seen the Outer Limits episode, it is an absolute classic, it won awards, and was written by Harlan Ellison. I think it is even credited in Terminator, and used the same building that much of Bladerunner is set in.
Spent the afternoon in the garden, a bit iffy for mowing the lawn, but plenty of trimming and weeding to do. This year just seems to be a year of trimming and weeding and not much time for anything else. That said, when the weather is fine, there is no better place to be than pottering in the garden. I have grown a pair of wormwood bushes from seed, and one is full of bugs. Gratifying to see that it also has a few very happy ladybirds, getting all lethargic from a constant diet of aphids. I suppose we need to offer the habitat if we want to keep the nature.
Not an incredibly busy week, but pretty steady, I tend to measure these things by meetings, so there were a couple of meetings where I was simply attending/supporting, which was fine. A couple of pretty informal ones where I was just meeting people. And one where I ended up sorting out the agenda and chairing.
This last meeting was our branch meeting, there have been quite a few changes lately, and a few more coming up, so there was a feeling in the air that we needed to get together to discuss. That said, I was not convinced that an informal structure would work, so I pushed for an agenda, and was offered the chance to chair, which I took up. I tend to chair a meeting, in pretty much the same way that I facilitate a meeting. That is, I like everyone to get a chance to speak, and I see it as my role to ensure that the quieter voices get heard, and the louder voices let them. Actually it went pretty well.
I also had a meeting with my mentor, something that has been arranged through work, and had been in the planning stage for ages, but now that it has got going is really excellent. I suppose every mentoring arrangement is different, but I find this a useful sounding board, and having discussed approaches, I then feel committed to actually do what I promised to do. So in terms of personal development, it is a useful motor to get me to try and push myself. The chairing the branch meeting was one of those things, I could have simply sat back, but there was that little voice saying, this is the sort of developmental thing that it would be good to do. If you think you are promotion material, you need to be demonstrating the skills.
I'm applying for another job, which actually looks pretty good, though challenging. However I am not going to die in a ditch if I don't get it. Simply get some feedback on my performance, and try and do better the next time. To be honest I am more focussed on extra salary as something that will impact on my pension, than as take home pay at the moment. Although, like everyone else, money is starting to get pretty tight.
Yesterday, went quickly. By the time you get through the big pile of chores, and walk the dog, and relax a bit, it is time for bed.
Trying to find things that we can watch together with the girls, which currently covers upto a 12 certificate. So yesterday we saw an Outer Limits episode, Demon with the Glass Hand, and Terminator 3. A bit of an opportunity to compare and contrast classic science fiction with a more modern version. For those that have not seen the Outer Limits episode, it is an absolute classic, it won awards, and was written by Harlan Ellison. I think it is even credited in Terminator, and used the same building that much of Bladerunner is set in.
Spent the afternoon in the garden, a bit iffy for mowing the lawn, but plenty of trimming and weeding to do. This year just seems to be a year of trimming and weeding and not much time for anything else. That said, when the weather is fine, there is no better place to be than pottering in the garden. I have grown a pair of wormwood bushes from seed, and one is full of bugs. Gratifying to see that it also has a few very happy ladybirds, getting all lethargic from a constant diet of aphids. I suppose we need to offer the habitat if we want to keep the nature.
Sunday 24 August 2008
do - learn - do better
As predicted a few blog entries ago, I did not get that post I applied for. Not much surprise, they were in a rush to fill it, so they would have phoned up and offered the post to their candidate within the day, so the fact that I had not got a call, pretty much confirmed that I had not got the post.
But I do feel ready to get my teeth into something more challenging than what I am doing now. It would be easy enough to get depressed by being knocked back, and give up trying, but ...
Maybe I just need to set myself a goal of getting a new post, tackle it like any other project. Part of the challenge is that as you move up the grades you move away from doing what you are told to do, more onto setting your own agenda and then trying to bring people along with you. I know that I would be good at something more challenging, but the problem around convincing someone else that I am the best person for their job.
Gone are the days when you sat back on your seniority and earnt a promotion through being around for long enough. Just my luck! Now that I have the seniority, they don't want it anymore!
Still, just pick myself up, dust myself down, and throw myself back into the fray, or
do - learn - do better
But I do feel ready to get my teeth into something more challenging than what I am doing now. It would be easy enough to get depressed by being knocked back, and give up trying, but ...
- being good at interviews is different from being good at the job, I will be vastly better at the job than I am at interview
- I can always get better at doing interviews
- what ever I am not doing terribly well, I can address
- you don't need to win every battle, the odd battle is fine
Maybe I just need to set myself a goal of getting a new post, tackle it like any other project. Part of the challenge is that as you move up the grades you move away from doing what you are told to do, more onto setting your own agenda and then trying to bring people along with you. I know that I would be good at something more challenging, but the problem around convincing someone else that I am the best person for their job.
Gone are the days when you sat back on your seniority and earnt a promotion through being around for long enough. Just my luck! Now that I have the seniority, they don't want it anymore!
Still, just pick myself up, dust myself down, and throw myself back into the fray, or
do - learn - do better
the weather is the best of policemen
I am probably a bit more distracted than usual, as I was out with the Strathclyde police last night, seeing how they police the Glasgow night time economy. They do quite a lot of these tours for people, letting them see at first hand how to police a major British city.
It is only fair to say that I have been apprehensive about the trip for some time, but on the night it was hugely informing and I would recommend it to anyone. The police have been working with various partners to ensure that the city is well lit, well covered by CCTV, safe zones exist with orderly taxi queues and paramedics on hand.
Of course with all the technology and police in the world, the weather can still be the best of policemen, the night was cool and wet, so folk drifted off home steadily, rather that waiting for the mass mayhem of all exiting clubs at 3am in the morning.
By the time that you had seen the initial briefing, seen people watching vast concave walls of CCTVs, control staff directing the troops on the ground, you could not help feeling that this was a well ordered process, with people knowing their roles and very effectively keeping control of what could be mayhem. It was also clear that the police themselves relished the work, they were on the front line, perhaps getting overtime, they knew what they had to do, and that if required their back up would be with them within a minute, in that sense they were the biggest and best organised gang on the street.
I got back home after 3am, and slept soundly in my bed.
It is only fair to say that I have been apprehensive about the trip for some time, but on the night it was hugely informing and I would recommend it to anyone. The police have been working with various partners to ensure that the city is well lit, well covered by CCTV, safe zones exist with orderly taxi queues and paramedics on hand.
Of course with all the technology and police in the world, the weather can still be the best of policemen, the night was cool and wet, so folk drifted off home steadily, rather that waiting for the mass mayhem of all exiting clubs at 3am in the morning.
By the time that you had seen the initial briefing, seen people watching vast concave walls of CCTVs, control staff directing the troops on the ground, you could not help feeling that this was a well ordered process, with people knowing their roles and very effectively keeping control of what could be mayhem. It was also clear that the police themselves relished the work, they were on the front line, perhaps getting overtime, they knew what they had to do, and that if required their back up would be with them within a minute, in that sense they were the biggest and best organised gang on the street.
I got back home after 3am, and slept soundly in my bed.
Monday 18 August 2008
dealing with the world the way that it is, while managing to subtly move it in the direction of where we think that it ought to be
Things have been all very busy lately, with much that is strange and new. So I have fallen out of my normal routine, spending more time on things than I normally might, and doing things that I normally might not.
I set myself a sort of target to do a blog entry a week, but seeing as I have missed a couple of Saturday's, I posted a short story that I wrote a while back by way of recompense. I'm not sure what anyone else will think about it, but reading it now, with enough time elapsed for me to have forgotten the detail of it, I still think that it reads very well. It is so difficult to get perspective on what you write, it is easy to be over-critical, and as soon as you are familiar with something, it is impossible to be objective. You really need to be able to look at something with a stranger's eyes. So with my stranger's eyes, I still like it, so content to upload it here.
Part of the point of writing a weekly blog is that it rather forces me to loosen up on what I write, my self imposed target is to write something every week, and that just forces you to write something/anything. My other stipulation is that I write it, check it, then upload it. So it is not something that is considered and redrafted and reconsidered and redrafted, just something done and up there. Quite refreshing to do something with such low expectations.
We are coming to the end of the holiday season, so the girls go back to school, a couple of colleagues are off on a final week of leave, but all will be back to normal before too long. I've not really made much of the holidays, there was the stay-cation, which was all very nice, and plenty of ad hoc days off, but all very low key. Once again, I have failed to sort out all the problems of the world. But modest progress has been made. There has been a major push clearing junk out of the loft and now the long hard slog of making best use of it. I'm buying storage boxes from IKEA, and thinking about how best to store all sorts of things. I want to find ways of storing things such that they are accessible, but reasonably compact. So there are all manner of processes in hand,
1 work through stuff to get rid of the third to half that is actually rubbish
2 source better storage options for the remainder
3 put like with like, so that it becomes obvious when enough of something tips over into too much
I am used to jobs that you can actually split into tasks and project plan, but sorting out the loft is not really like that, you can identify near future stuff to do, but as you work on, it creates opportunities, and demands new solutions, so you never quite know where you are going, but you do have a direction of travel. I guess that a lot of stuff is like that really, more a direction of travel, than a clear project.
Other stuff, I was helping out at a couple of events that someone else was running. This meant reading up on a new policy area, meeting some new folk, and working with some new stakeholders. All positive stuff. However I am part of a pool of volunteers that help out with events, and despite there being something like a hundred people in the pool, only two of us volunteered! I guess that most people don't enjoy these things the same way that I do. Anyway, a chance to work with some bright sparky people, and do something different for a couple of days. The downside is being shattered by all the travel, but hey ho.
Also trying to get my head round what I need to do this week, when various colleagues are off. After being distinctly not busy, a gradual head of work has been piling up, and I now have ample stuff to get on with, some of which is even getting worryingly old and needs pretty urgent action. I would like to see a bit more structure to things, but with luck I can start to push things along in that direction. It would be wonderful to deal with the world the way that we think that it ought to be, but the real trick is in dealing with the world the way that it is, while managing to subtly move it in the direction of where we think that it ought to be. This is self effacing stuff, less about you, than quietly and gently achieving your vision.
The garden progresses, a wet year, so beyond keeping on top of the weeding, and the mowing, there has not been much terribly dramatic this year. I could easily spend a week out there, and really get the garden more how I would like it to be. However there is probably another solid week of work in sorting out the loft, as well as a week of painting and fixing stuff round the house exterior. Giving myself credit, I have felted the shed roof, painted the bathroom, pushed on the loft vastly, and over the past year made a step change in the household IT set up. I'm never exactly idle!
I set myself a sort of target to do a blog entry a week, but seeing as I have missed a couple of Saturday's, I posted a short story that I wrote a while back by way of recompense. I'm not sure what anyone else will think about it, but reading it now, with enough time elapsed for me to have forgotten the detail of it, I still think that it reads very well. It is so difficult to get perspective on what you write, it is easy to be over-critical, and as soon as you are familiar with something, it is impossible to be objective. You really need to be able to look at something with a stranger's eyes. So with my stranger's eyes, I still like it, so content to upload it here.
Part of the point of writing a weekly blog is that it rather forces me to loosen up on what I write, my self imposed target is to write something every week, and that just forces you to write something/anything. My other stipulation is that I write it, check it, then upload it. So it is not something that is considered and redrafted and reconsidered and redrafted, just something done and up there. Quite refreshing to do something with such low expectations.
We are coming to the end of the holiday season, so the girls go back to school, a couple of colleagues are off on a final week of leave, but all will be back to normal before too long. I've not really made much of the holidays, there was the stay-cation, which was all very nice, and plenty of ad hoc days off, but all very low key. Once again, I have failed to sort out all the problems of the world. But modest progress has been made. There has been a major push clearing junk out of the loft and now the long hard slog of making best use of it. I'm buying storage boxes from IKEA, and thinking about how best to store all sorts of things. I want to find ways of storing things such that they are accessible, but reasonably compact. So there are all manner of processes in hand,
1 work through stuff to get rid of the third to half that is actually rubbish
2 source better storage options for the remainder
3 put like with like, so that it becomes obvious when enough of something tips over into too much
I am used to jobs that you can actually split into tasks and project plan, but sorting out the loft is not really like that, you can identify near future stuff to do, but as you work on, it creates opportunities, and demands new solutions, so you never quite know where you are going, but you do have a direction of travel. I guess that a lot of stuff is like that really, more a direction of travel, than a clear project.
Other stuff, I was helping out at a couple of events that someone else was running. This meant reading up on a new policy area, meeting some new folk, and working with some new stakeholders. All positive stuff. However I am part of a pool of volunteers that help out with events, and despite there being something like a hundred people in the pool, only two of us volunteered! I guess that most people don't enjoy these things the same way that I do. Anyway, a chance to work with some bright sparky people, and do something different for a couple of days. The downside is being shattered by all the travel, but hey ho.
Also trying to get my head round what I need to do this week, when various colleagues are off. After being distinctly not busy, a gradual head of work has been piling up, and I now have ample stuff to get on with, some of which is even getting worryingly old and needs pretty urgent action. I would like to see a bit more structure to things, but with luck I can start to push things along in that direction. It would be wonderful to deal with the world the way that we think that it ought to be, but the real trick is in dealing with the world the way that it is, while managing to subtly move it in the direction of where we think that it ought to be. This is self effacing stuff, less about you, than quietly and gently achieving your vision.
The garden progresses, a wet year, so beyond keeping on top of the weeding, and the mowing, there has not been much terribly dramatic this year. I could easily spend a week out there, and really get the garden more how I would like it to be. However there is probably another solid week of work in sorting out the loft, as well as a week of painting and fixing stuff round the house exterior. Giving myself credit, I have felted the shed roof, painted the bathroom, pushed on the loft vastly, and over the past year made a step change in the household IT set up. I'm never exactly idle!
Bad Star Back
I have been a bit remiss lately in posting my blog, so by way of recompense, I attach a short story that I wrote a while back. I hope that you like it,
Peter
-----------------
Bad Star Back
Our breaths mingle, maybe she is dead already. But I'm starting at the end, when I should be starting at the beginning.
I had to leave town in a hurry, there was a misunderstanding. An incident with a broken bottle. Easiest by far that I just got out of town until it all blew over.
So I went to John with my tail between my legs, he didn't like me, never liked me. He thought I was a pisshead, and he was probably right. But I never drank when we went out, and I was not enough of a pisshead for that to cause insurmountable problems. He huffed and puffed, and sighed and twitched, but we both knew that he would sign me on, so we went through the pointless charade, like monkeys establishing a hierarchy.
There were not many of us, just John, Jenny, the other John, Mike and myself.
John was in charge, he had tenure, in the sterile confines of academia tenure is god. Jenny went out with John, so that was pretty good for her too. I don't imagine that this was a particularly exclusive arrangement for him, with tenure, and god status, you could pretty much make up the rules to suit yourself, and no one would particularly object. The other John thought that if he brown-nosed and tagged along for long enough then one day he too would get tenure. He had been a moderately promising student a long time ago, now he has pissed away even more of his life than I had. Waiting for the modest crumbs that fell from the table, forever scuttling about on the bottom rung of the ladder, fated to never climb that ladder, and too long there for anything else to ever be practical. And Mike kept the Landrover running. Oily and quiet, never said much. He was the best of us.
Of course there was no real opportunity to speak of. We were a million miles away from anything that mattered. Some longitudinal geo surveys had been running since nineteen oatcake, and no one had the balls to pull the plug on them. Of course the methodology was questionable, the data almost certainly worthless, and never cited, but still it was collected routinely. I had come out here with the rest of them, and had drifted away, dispirited by the utter pointlessness of our existance. Infected with that pointlessness I had simply drifted on, drinking too much, and before long, had rendered myself too poor and talentless to manage to get away. And in the way of these things, it must have been what I had wanted.
We assembled at a rendezvous on the edge of town, I had a single shapeless canvas rucksack, and a rigid metal case for the cameras and lenses. As long as I failed to lose them, I had a slender means of support. I was early, I always am. The other John arrived next, and looked at me sullenly, as if any association with someone as disreputable as myself was a personal affront to him. I persisted in making small talk on the grounds that I knew it was annoying him, and the more sullen he became, the more polite and reasonable I became. Then Mike came along, and as Mike and engines went together like two sides of the same oily coin, the Landrover appeared next. John and Jenny were in the front seats.
Still buoyed by my chirpy good nature, I asked for a window seat, and was met with such sullen silence that I just mooched from then on. John made a point of kicking at my rucksack, expecting it to clink of bottles, although he knew that I never took alcohol on any of these trips. We sat in the back, John driving, with Mike beside him. The rest of us in the back like queezy children.
I hate travelling, we stopped after half a dozen miles, although I had been asking for a stop for most of them, and I threw up royally. Nothing to do with the drink, I just cannot travel. However the rest went back to sullenly ignoring me. I did not care. I felt like death warmed up, my stomache heaving, and my head throbbing. I did not care one iota about them, and barely cared whether I lived or died. There was a reason I had dropped out of these trips.
Pissing against a sand dune, piss uncovering something in the sand. Not a stone, not a lizard. Too still for a lizard, I stopped peeing on it, and pulled it out, getting my hand wet. It was a carving. Not just any carving, it was a lizard, but not like a carving. It was too realistic, like a lizard caught in a photo, artless and still.
I took it back to the Landrover. The others were unimpressed. Maybe they thought I had bought it in the market before we left. On my lap, I looked at it. There was something deeply wrong about it. This was not something that someone had made, not someone human. It was too strange and everyday, god had done this.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It wasn't a routine trip at all, that was why John had not been too choosy about me coming. He needed someone with the cameras I just came along with them. Back in the old country, where they read papers that are new, and can drink water out of the taps, a comet or something had been tracked. We were closest to it by a long margin, and they wanted someone to go out and have a look. Of course it was nothing to do with us. And in academic tradition, knowledge comes in two depths, infinite or zero. That was not our field, so we knew nothing, and cared less. But funders paid his wages, and you could sell a network of trained and flexible scientists to funders, so John had to borrow some equipment, head out into the desert and pretend to like it.
I did not have to pretent anything. Neither did the others, but at the end of the day, we got an overgenerous daily rate, and we never did anything but hang around, so we came along too.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We were only a day out and things started to go wrong, nothing you could put a finger on. Jenny looked out the windows like a woman possessed. Her eyes tracking back and fore following things we could not see. At first we had asked if there was anything out there, what she saw, but all she did was complain about the brightness, and look out all the more.
John pulled out a coffee sticky geiger counter, switched it on, it went off the scale. Then he switched it off and back on, and it just registered background radiation. He put it back in its box, and never took it out again.
Mike took to spending more and more time each night with his head under the bonnet. We always travelled by the grace of Mike, but the Landrover was a tank, it should have been gobbling up these miles. Instead it lurched and grinded on, the electrics seemed all shot to hell.
We each retreated into our own private worlds. I felt like I was dying, I always do when I travel. I did not care. The others, had their own private torments to contend with.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We ate our meal of baked beans, flakey and dry. The sky darkened, as the modest fire started to dwindle. I had gathered some dried scrub earlier, simply for something to do. There was no point in saying that we should give up, they all hated me, and saying it, would simply manoevre them into wanting to go on. Best to just remain quiet. Jenny was wall eyed with panic, gazing into the dark following imaginary shapes out there.
The other John spoke first, "I know that this is important and all, but it's not as if it is core project or anything."
He waited for some faint echo of support, finding none, he reluctantly pushed on. "It's not as if we are expecting to find anything, bit of a wild goose chase, and all that. If we damage the equipment or anything, we do risk scuttling the core project. You know what a comet is anyway, just a dirty snow ball, what we going to find out here, some burnt dirt if we're lucky."
John's eyes narrowed, he had not reacted when the other John started to speak, and it was not clear now whether he had heard him or was indeed replying to him now. "This place is tough, tougher than tough. The hardest, harshest environment in the world. If there is something here that needs done, we do it."
I stood up and walked off into the dark, we were going on. That much was obvious.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next day we found her. Driving along one of the flatter bits, a pile of rags, fluttering in the wind. But we stopped, and in the rags, congealed with blood, she lay. Skin wrinkled, like something old and worn smooth by time, she lay just moving, like a cat breathing.
The others were indifferent to her, you often found the dead or the dying out here, I had a bottle of water, and tried to move her into a position where she could drink. We did not have much water to spare, and she was as good as dead anyway, it was a pointless gesture. The others had decided to take this stop as an impromptu toilet break. That was cold, even for them.
Moving her head, something fell onto me, something heavy. I moved the rags, there was something amongst them, like a stone, I picked apart the scabbed rags, it was stone, peeled of the cloth, it was stone, something carved, like a hand. She was holding a carved hand. Probably found it out here, and thought it might be worth something.
I pulled at it, but she held on tight, ...
Then I realised, she was not holding the bloody thing, it was attached to her. Her hand was made out of stone. Pulling back her sleeves, tearing at them, her arm changed to stone, and her hand was stone, too bloody to tell what kind, but smooth and old, no wonder she was dying.
Her people had left her out here to die. No wonder, what could you do, what can any of us do, faced with such things.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We argued a lot then. But I thought John was an idiot, I can't be bothered with most people, John even less. He thought I was worthless. It was not much of an argument. I wanted to take her, he wanted to press on. The others said nothing. Jenny still wall eyed with panic, Mike tinkering with the Landrover electrics, the other John, something dead in his eyes, like he knew something, the ship was already holed below the waterline, but the captain was blind to it.
He hauled my rucksack out the back, it fell heavily, pulled out the cameras and threw the back gate shut again.
The deal was that they would come back to pick me up. We all knew it was a lie. There was little chance of finding me again. The Landrover was on its last legs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I could have watched the Landrover disappear into the distance, that would have been dramatic. I didn't. I checked the water that I had been hiding in my rucksack. That was why I had so much stuff lying loose in the back of the Landrover, I had been stashing water almost from the outset. Of course I had not been planning for this. Just another pointless act of rebellion.
The loose clothing, and paperbacks, John had kicked them out onto the sand. I gathered up my stuff.
Here I was. Here I stayed.
I cradled her head. Her eyes were cloudy, her breath was like the tide lapping.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That night I burnt much of what I had. It was cold, I did not expect to last another day. A little comfort. Looking deep into the burning papers, and clothing, that cloying sooty smoke. I was so beyond tired, so beyond sore. Then looking out beyond the fire, I began to see what Jenny had seen. Shapes, without shape, coloured without colour. Like some mathematical function performed on our reality. I was seeing something out there, something I could not understand, it had no sense, beyond the sense that it was huge and unknowable.
It was not dangerous. It was just totally indifferent. The cliff edge cares not whether you throw yourself off it. It is completely indifferent to you. As was this. It was alive in the way that the sea is, or plate tectonics, alive but so completely alien, that it is whole orders of magnitude unknowable.
I could feel Jenny in my mind, she was scared of it, she saw something you could neither understand nor master. There was panic in her. Panic so unreasonable and vast that it dwarfed everything else. She lived in a world of panic. A world coloured by panic, that tasted of panic. A fearful world, forcing her in on herself, turning her inwards, and making her pebble small.
The fire died before the soot did. We were black with it, it lined out mouths and noses, I started to cough.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I started to cough, I retched and it felt like something was tearing, and then all of a sudden, a flush of mucus and blood, and in it a pebble. But not just a pebble, it was the same as her bloody hand. I was coughing up stone.
She turned slightly, and spoke,
"Bad star, bad star back.'
I fell back, this body was broken and dying, it was time for a new one.
The sand dunes swithered in my sooty eyes, the comet was turning us to stone, the comet had been here before, it had turned us to stone before, long ago, countless times, times beyond times, we had all turned to stone before. We had turned to stone, and been worn down, worn down to sand, the sand around us.
Her people had not abandonned her, they were here with her, all around her.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I began to feel peace, I could not fight the ocean tides, but I could see them for what they were, and see my place in them. Rich and strange, infinitely rich and infinitely strange. I felt a peace that was beyond language, beyond meaning. I drew breath, and cradled her head, our breaths mingled, as the strange began to seem commonplace, and the commonplace strange, letting go, I no longer felt the tide tugging, as it started to carry me.
Peter
-----------------
Bad Star Back
Our breaths mingle, maybe she is dead already. But I'm starting at the end, when I should be starting at the beginning.
I had to leave town in a hurry, there was a misunderstanding. An incident with a broken bottle. Easiest by far that I just got out of town until it all blew over.
So I went to John with my tail between my legs, he didn't like me, never liked me. He thought I was a pisshead, and he was probably right. But I never drank when we went out, and I was not enough of a pisshead for that to cause insurmountable problems. He huffed and puffed, and sighed and twitched, but we both knew that he would sign me on, so we went through the pointless charade, like monkeys establishing a hierarchy.
There were not many of us, just John, Jenny, the other John, Mike and myself.
John was in charge, he had tenure, in the sterile confines of academia tenure is god. Jenny went out with John, so that was pretty good for her too. I don't imagine that this was a particularly exclusive arrangement for him, with tenure, and god status, you could pretty much make up the rules to suit yourself, and no one would particularly object. The other John thought that if he brown-nosed and tagged along for long enough then one day he too would get tenure. He had been a moderately promising student a long time ago, now he has pissed away even more of his life than I had. Waiting for the modest crumbs that fell from the table, forever scuttling about on the bottom rung of the ladder, fated to never climb that ladder, and too long there for anything else to ever be practical. And Mike kept the Landrover running. Oily and quiet, never said much. He was the best of us.
Of course there was no real opportunity to speak of. We were a million miles away from anything that mattered. Some longitudinal geo surveys had been running since nineteen oatcake, and no one had the balls to pull the plug on them. Of course the methodology was questionable, the data almost certainly worthless, and never cited, but still it was collected routinely. I had come out here with the rest of them, and had drifted away, dispirited by the utter pointlessness of our existance. Infected with that pointlessness I had simply drifted on, drinking too much, and before long, had rendered myself too poor and talentless to manage to get away. And in the way of these things, it must have been what I had wanted.
We assembled at a rendezvous on the edge of town, I had a single shapeless canvas rucksack, and a rigid metal case for the cameras and lenses. As long as I failed to lose them, I had a slender means of support. I was early, I always am. The other John arrived next, and looked at me sullenly, as if any association with someone as disreputable as myself was a personal affront to him. I persisted in making small talk on the grounds that I knew it was annoying him, and the more sullen he became, the more polite and reasonable I became. Then Mike came along, and as Mike and engines went together like two sides of the same oily coin, the Landrover appeared next. John and Jenny were in the front seats.
Still buoyed by my chirpy good nature, I asked for a window seat, and was met with such sullen silence that I just mooched from then on. John made a point of kicking at my rucksack, expecting it to clink of bottles, although he knew that I never took alcohol on any of these trips. We sat in the back, John driving, with Mike beside him. The rest of us in the back like queezy children.
I hate travelling, we stopped after half a dozen miles, although I had been asking for a stop for most of them, and I threw up royally. Nothing to do with the drink, I just cannot travel. However the rest went back to sullenly ignoring me. I did not care. I felt like death warmed up, my stomache heaving, and my head throbbing. I did not care one iota about them, and barely cared whether I lived or died. There was a reason I had dropped out of these trips.
Pissing against a sand dune, piss uncovering something in the sand. Not a stone, not a lizard. Too still for a lizard, I stopped peeing on it, and pulled it out, getting my hand wet. It was a carving. Not just any carving, it was a lizard, but not like a carving. It was too realistic, like a lizard caught in a photo, artless and still.
I took it back to the Landrover. The others were unimpressed. Maybe they thought I had bought it in the market before we left. On my lap, I looked at it. There was something deeply wrong about it. This was not something that someone had made, not someone human. It was too strange and everyday, god had done this.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It wasn't a routine trip at all, that was why John had not been too choosy about me coming. He needed someone with the cameras I just came along with them. Back in the old country, where they read papers that are new, and can drink water out of the taps, a comet or something had been tracked. We were closest to it by a long margin, and they wanted someone to go out and have a look. Of course it was nothing to do with us. And in academic tradition, knowledge comes in two depths, infinite or zero. That was not our field, so we knew nothing, and cared less. But funders paid his wages, and you could sell a network of trained and flexible scientists to funders, so John had to borrow some equipment, head out into the desert and pretend to like it.
I did not have to pretent anything. Neither did the others, but at the end of the day, we got an overgenerous daily rate, and we never did anything but hang around, so we came along too.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We were only a day out and things started to go wrong, nothing you could put a finger on. Jenny looked out the windows like a woman possessed. Her eyes tracking back and fore following things we could not see. At first we had asked if there was anything out there, what she saw, but all she did was complain about the brightness, and look out all the more.
John pulled out a coffee sticky geiger counter, switched it on, it went off the scale. Then he switched it off and back on, and it just registered background radiation. He put it back in its box, and never took it out again.
Mike took to spending more and more time each night with his head under the bonnet. We always travelled by the grace of Mike, but the Landrover was a tank, it should have been gobbling up these miles. Instead it lurched and grinded on, the electrics seemed all shot to hell.
We each retreated into our own private worlds. I felt like I was dying, I always do when I travel. I did not care. The others, had their own private torments to contend with.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We ate our meal of baked beans, flakey and dry. The sky darkened, as the modest fire started to dwindle. I had gathered some dried scrub earlier, simply for something to do. There was no point in saying that we should give up, they all hated me, and saying it, would simply manoevre them into wanting to go on. Best to just remain quiet. Jenny was wall eyed with panic, gazing into the dark following imaginary shapes out there.
The other John spoke first, "I know that this is important and all, but it's not as if it is core project or anything."
He waited for some faint echo of support, finding none, he reluctantly pushed on. "It's not as if we are expecting to find anything, bit of a wild goose chase, and all that. If we damage the equipment or anything, we do risk scuttling the core project. You know what a comet is anyway, just a dirty snow ball, what we going to find out here, some burnt dirt if we're lucky."
John's eyes narrowed, he had not reacted when the other John started to speak, and it was not clear now whether he had heard him or was indeed replying to him now. "This place is tough, tougher than tough. The hardest, harshest environment in the world. If there is something here that needs done, we do it."
I stood up and walked off into the dark, we were going on. That much was obvious.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next day we found her. Driving along one of the flatter bits, a pile of rags, fluttering in the wind. But we stopped, and in the rags, congealed with blood, she lay. Skin wrinkled, like something old and worn smooth by time, she lay just moving, like a cat breathing.
The others were indifferent to her, you often found the dead or the dying out here, I had a bottle of water, and tried to move her into a position where she could drink. We did not have much water to spare, and she was as good as dead anyway, it was a pointless gesture. The others had decided to take this stop as an impromptu toilet break. That was cold, even for them.
Moving her head, something fell onto me, something heavy. I moved the rags, there was something amongst them, like a stone, I picked apart the scabbed rags, it was stone, peeled of the cloth, it was stone, something carved, like a hand. She was holding a carved hand. Probably found it out here, and thought it might be worth something.
I pulled at it, but she held on tight, ...
Then I realised, she was not holding the bloody thing, it was attached to her. Her hand was made out of stone. Pulling back her sleeves, tearing at them, her arm changed to stone, and her hand was stone, too bloody to tell what kind, but smooth and old, no wonder she was dying.
Her people had left her out here to die. No wonder, what could you do, what can any of us do, faced with such things.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We argued a lot then. But I thought John was an idiot, I can't be bothered with most people, John even less. He thought I was worthless. It was not much of an argument. I wanted to take her, he wanted to press on. The others said nothing. Jenny still wall eyed with panic, Mike tinkering with the Landrover electrics, the other John, something dead in his eyes, like he knew something, the ship was already holed below the waterline, but the captain was blind to it.
He hauled my rucksack out the back, it fell heavily, pulled out the cameras and threw the back gate shut again.
The deal was that they would come back to pick me up. We all knew it was a lie. There was little chance of finding me again. The Landrover was on its last legs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I could have watched the Landrover disappear into the distance, that would have been dramatic. I didn't. I checked the water that I had been hiding in my rucksack. That was why I had so much stuff lying loose in the back of the Landrover, I had been stashing water almost from the outset. Of course I had not been planning for this. Just another pointless act of rebellion.
The loose clothing, and paperbacks, John had kicked them out onto the sand. I gathered up my stuff.
Here I was. Here I stayed.
I cradled her head. Her eyes were cloudy, her breath was like the tide lapping.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That night I burnt much of what I had. It was cold, I did not expect to last another day. A little comfort. Looking deep into the burning papers, and clothing, that cloying sooty smoke. I was so beyond tired, so beyond sore. Then looking out beyond the fire, I began to see what Jenny had seen. Shapes, without shape, coloured without colour. Like some mathematical function performed on our reality. I was seeing something out there, something I could not understand, it had no sense, beyond the sense that it was huge and unknowable.
It was not dangerous. It was just totally indifferent. The cliff edge cares not whether you throw yourself off it. It is completely indifferent to you. As was this. It was alive in the way that the sea is, or plate tectonics, alive but so completely alien, that it is whole orders of magnitude unknowable.
I could feel Jenny in my mind, she was scared of it, she saw something you could neither understand nor master. There was panic in her. Panic so unreasonable and vast that it dwarfed everything else. She lived in a world of panic. A world coloured by panic, that tasted of panic. A fearful world, forcing her in on herself, turning her inwards, and making her pebble small.
The fire died before the soot did. We were black with it, it lined out mouths and noses, I started to cough.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I started to cough, I retched and it felt like something was tearing, and then all of a sudden, a flush of mucus and blood, and in it a pebble. But not just a pebble, it was the same as her bloody hand. I was coughing up stone.
She turned slightly, and spoke,
"Bad star, bad star back.'
I fell back, this body was broken and dying, it was time for a new one.
The sand dunes swithered in my sooty eyes, the comet was turning us to stone, the comet had been here before, it had turned us to stone before, long ago, countless times, times beyond times, we had all turned to stone before. We had turned to stone, and been worn down, worn down to sand, the sand around us.
Her people had not abandonned her, they were here with her, all around her.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I began to feel peace, I could not fight the ocean tides, but I could see them for what they were, and see my place in them. Rich and strange, infinitely rich and infinitely strange. I felt a peace that was beyond language, beyond meaning. I drew breath, and cradled her head, our breaths mingled, as the strange began to seem commonplace, and the commonplace strange, letting go, I no longer felt the tide tugging, as it started to carry me.
Friday 1 August 2008
week off
This week has been my long awaited week off work, though as ever, nothing is quite what it seems, or says on the tin.
I did end up going into work on Wednesday for a job interview, which I suspect I was not successful in, although the interview went okay, there is a lot of tough competition these days.
While most people have moved over to stay-cations, where they don't leave the country, we have barely left the house. It has given us a chance to catch up on things, though the nature of the things you catch up on, is that they still never get entirely finished! There are just too many things, and big things beget small things and perspective means that ever bigger things can hide behind the visible things, so that when you deal with the visible things, other equally big things, though slightly more distant things, hove into view.
So, I have been dealing with things, but having got some of the great looming / depressing things done, it is at least possible to see the landscape of things more clearly, and get a better grasp of the lay of the land, thing-wise
We have -
- painted the bathroom
- found a skip load of what can only really be described as rubbish, in the loft. I think when you cannot be bothered to get rid of things, you just kind of think, ohh, it might come in handy, lets just stick it up the loft. Still a work in progress, but it is like finding a whole new room up there, now that the big indeterminate piles of stuff have got sorted through and in part, thrown out.
- put mdf panels on the back of a couple of cheap shelves, so that they don't wobble about all over the place, and they now hold all my wife's jams, chutneys, and associated paraphanalia.
- emptied out one of my composters, and blitzed the garden, trimming hedges, pulling out weeds, and regaining control of some of the bits that were getting totally lost beneath weeds. My fruit trees and bushes and now looking much happier, now they can get some light and air in about them.
- We have modestly cropped the garden, using redcurrents for a crumble, volunteer potatoes, as well as dill and parsley. A bumper crop of apples is not far off, I've also foraged for Billberries, as per my last blog.
- Number two daughter has been appointed soux chef, to my wife, and has been spending afternoons in the kitchen helping her to prepare some really splendid meals,
- we have been buying the odd copy of the Mail for the free DVDs, and the girls have been getting into costume dramas, Pride and Prejudice was a huge hit, they have also seen Emma, and are all now half way through Rebecca.
- I've sorted through the bulk of my clothes, getting rid of stuff that I have not worn since University, with all my stuff now sorted into neat piles, weekend tee shirts, polo shirts, smart jerseys, not so smart jerseys, trousers for the garden (the biggest pile), smart casual trousers (ie trousers that I have not yet spilt paint on) and office trousers.
- I've made major in roads into a foot tall pile of old newspapers, and recent magazines,
- the dog has had plenty of good walks
- I have also been setting the girls little projects, to try and get their imaginations working, building robots from Lego, recording music on Garageband, researching how to use crops from the garden, mini projects on a garden plant of their choice,
Finally I'll include some Chic Murray jokes that were in the Sunday Times found in that big foot high pile, because,
(a) I think that he is just hilarious, and;
(b) they make me smile
Doctor, I've got butterflies in my stomach
Oh, what have you been eating?
Butterflies.
Sergeant, get those screaming women into my tent this minute.
But they're not screaming, sir.
They're not in my tent yet.
Good evening madam, I'm from the environmental health department pest control division,
Aye well, you'd better come in, he's not home from the pub yet.
Colour television, whatever next? I won't believe it till I see it in black and white.
It was so boring six empty seats walked out.
For years, I've admired you from afar.
Mmmm, that's about the right distance.
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