there's a war on - perhaps you miscounted? May 31, 2005  

I've just done my first imperial century. To be more precise: 103.85 miles, 167k in real money. Took 8 hours 46 minutes. I would describe my condition as 'knackered'. I have opinions about both headwinds and rain. I am now going to have a beer and then probably fall asleep in front of the television.

one for the pebbles, two for the snow May 26, 2005  

It's all been a bit cold, rainy and dodgy for the last week or so. The weather has lurched from shower to shower, with occasional bursts of brilliant sunshine interspersed. The overall effect is that you're never quite sure whether to wear shorts and a t-shirt or a parka. Mind you, the weather forecast for the end of this week has the maximum temperature knocking on the door of 30 celsius (!), so it looks like the upcoming bank holiday should be good. We've got a few plans for the weekend; I finished Heather's bike yesterday, so we need to get around to road-testing that one...

The other day, I was holding Lisa and Paul's bairn, wee Jack, and marvelling at how incredibly tiny he is. You just get used to the size of your own baby, and kind of calibrate based on that. So when someone hands you a much younger child, it's like juggling feathers. He's a cute wee thing; looks a lot like his dad. Rebecca, in contrast, is now running around the house at a rate of knots, and has taken to hiding behind the curtains in the kitchen and giggling fiercely when she thinks you can't see her. She's also become intensely interested in the small amount of gravel in the back garden, and crouches down with a very serious expression to examine the gravel really closely. Or to shove it in her mouth before I can stop her - take your pick.

It's May, it's raining: it must be time for the annual Cambridge Beer Festival! Yup, the big tent is back up on Jesus Green, and once more a load of frankly worrying looking people are dispensing oddly named brews. Unusually, this year about 25% of the serving staff are not the traditional old blokes with huge beer guts, but North Asian women in their early 20s. What? Still, I'm not complaining - they're a lot faster on the draw. The range of beers is as impressive as ever. The festival is also open during lunch, and there's a definite contingent from our work that's going to be down each day. Due to various other obligations, I'm unable to go during lunch for most of this week (though I'll be there on Thursday after work); somehow, I suspect that afternoons this week may not be the most productive for some of my coworkers.

I'm still tempted to take my Camelback down and see if I can convince one of them to fill it up, mind.

With the upcoming Lions tour of NZ, there's been a lot of kerfuffle about the presence of Alastair Campbell (supremo UK govt spin doctor, now out of a job) on the tour entourage. On Radio 4 this morning, some bugger from the Spectator read an open letter to New Zealand, talking about how we'd probably weren't expecting to have this hyper-slick media presence suddenly land in our midst. He warned us to be careful of Campbell confusing us with his complicated and subtle media manipulation. Although he didn't say it, the basic tone was that New Zealand is a simple, pure place, which doesn't have slick media sharks. I mean, has he not heard of Winston Peters? The piece finished, I was mentally crafting the letter of complaint, and John Humphries said "That was an open letter from [geezer's name] to all New Zealanders ... who've never read a newspaper." Nicely dismissed, Mr Humphries.

I mean, I'll quite happily pull the "We sing. We dance. We are a simple people, sahib" act with the poms, but I get quite hacked off when the buggers take it seriously. It's like the one time that Heather had someone (a Cambridge don, funnily enough) refer to her as a "colonial" in all seriousness. Tch!

As well as the Beer Festival, it's the week for the Chelsea Flower show! While you might expect it to be full of the a gert big tent full of the oil-drizzling classes, all merrily sipping Pimms and chattering away about the latest trends in patio design, it's actually pretty egalitarian and just chock full of people who really like plants (though there's a certain upper crust representation). Trust me - I helped out on the Carnivorous Plant Society's stall twice, so I've been there and done that. So it's nice to see that easily the best thing about last year's coverage of Chelsea, the lads from Fernatix, are back and getting a bit of good press. It's nice to know that two big hairy leather queens with a serious passion for ferns can be taken into the heart of the great British public.

waiting for the emails on this one May 20, 2005  

I've worked out why Lord of the Rings is so popular. The core dynamic of the Fellowship of the Ring cleaves to a particular formula, time-tested and proven to ensure audience popularity. It's a group dynamic that provides something for everyone. You've got the pretty boy (Legolas), the soulful bit of rough (Aragorn), the serious and slightly threatening bit of rough (Gimli), the cheeky one with the sense of humour (Merry), and the faintly gormless one who needs taking care of (Pippin). Is this sounding familiar to anyone? That's a collection of tropes that we've seen a lot of, in various incarnations, in the last few years. Not in movies, necessarily, but in the field of popular music and the attendant media attention. Yes - the reason that the movie versions of Lord of the Rings were so popular is that at the heart of it, the core of the Fellowship of the Ring is basically a boy band.

Currently in the process of putting the house on the market. If you're after a 2 bedroom end terrace house in North Cambridge (handy for the science park!), drop us a line.

a brief comment on modern art May 13, 2005  

One of the things that I find annoying about the divide between "traditional" and "modern" art is the blather of the traditionalists. "Look at that trash!", they shout. "Anyone could do it! It's meaningless! Proper art requires great skill, great technique!"

Sod technique.

Technique without spirit is pointless. Unless you make a connection with your audience, it doesn't matter how perfect your technique is. The essence of any art is in that communication between artist and audience. Without that connection, anything - a watercolor landscape, a poem, a guitar solo - is empty, no matter how masterful the technique. With the connection, it's art. Without, it's craft.

This is not to dismiss technique, of course. But the point of technique is that it's not an end in itself: it's how you communicate. Technical ability can be important; it can facilitate that communication, can provide a new means of establishing the connection. But it's the connection that's important. Insofar as technique serves that, it's important; otherwise, you're just showing off how good your fingerwork is.

An additional point is this: there's been a lot of really, really bad, banal, sugar-coated and bootlicking traditional art. But it gets lost and ignored, because people don't bother to preserve it. More or less by definition, the gallery and collecting system acts to winnow out the really good stuff. So it's kind of pointless to look at the existing canon of "traditional" art - which has undergone this winnowing process, and thus tends towards the better stuff anyway - and compare it to the art currently being produced. Yes, there's a fair bit of shite coming out there. But in fifty years' time, the good stuff - the works that really connect with the audience, that capture that elusive spark - will still be here, and the dross will have disappeared.

And besides - have you ever tried making a 40 foot high replica of a stuffed toy out of pots of flowers? It's bloody hard. I'd like to see one of them Old Masters have a go at that.

achingly pushing,
rolling sore pedals uphill;
crests - a false summit.

A brief haiku on that moment when you're giving a hill everything you've got, and you're nearly at the top, and then you realise that you've actually got a lot further to go than you'd thought.

pasty faced May 11, 2005  

Apologies for not posting something earlier - having just got back from a week in sunny Cornwall, we've been a bit busy. I would have written this up yesterday, but I had to rush home slightly early in time to rush off with Heather to Ipswich (jewel of Suffolk) to attend a taping of the most excellent BBC radio show I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue. Woo hoo! Unfortunately, the location (Ipswich) meant that we had to drive for over an hour to get there, and had to leave a bit early in case of traffic (a not inconsiderable consideration leaving Camridge in the rush hour). And the gig started at 7:30. So at 5:30pm we tooled up and drove off, leaving Rebecca behind in the capable hands of Alison. The gig itself was most cool - the process of recording two 30 minute shows meant a 3-hour evening. It was fascinating to see the incredibly high-tech equipment and professional approach, and good to see that the BBC is keeping up the tradition of requiring performers to wear full evening dress at all times. Also, it were damn funny. An excellent night out, followed by another 50-mile drive, arriving home at just before midnight to find that Rebecca had been very good for Alison and had kipped out precisely on schedule. And it turns out that Alison hadn't needed all of the 3 pages of closely typed instructions on Rebecca's bedtime routine that I'd left (I write technical documentation for a living, so I like to ensure that everything is spelt out clearly and thoroughly).

Of course, the reason for the previous hiatus is our week's holiday in Cornwall. Nice. Determined as ever to see as much of the UK as we can before taking off back home, and with a bank holiday providing a good excuse, we took off to stay for a week in Tintagel. Tintagel looked like a good place to stay, based on my dim recollection of the Goon Show episode The Spectre of Tintagel. Apparently, if you hear the ghostly music on the ramparts of King Arthur's old castle three times, you die. I reckoned we'd take the chance - besides, Valentine Dyall's not around at the moment, we should be fine.

Tintagel village itself isn't the nicest place in the world: it's extremely touristesque. The castle, however, is excellent. Whether or not it was indeed Arthur's birthplace, it's been knocking around for quite a while. Specifically, since at least 1200 or so. The castle is built on a headland that protrudes out from the coast, and is almost an island. The isthmus connecting the headland to the mainland isn't too thin, but on each side you've got a near-vertical slope, so the only practical way to get across is via a bridge - making the headland a very defensible position. This means that it's been inhabited by humans for a very long time indeed; the headland itself is covered with the remains of old cottages, bits of castle, etc. Archaeological digs have discovered remnants of 6th century glass from the Mediterannean, so there's evidence for external trade going back a bit too. It's a great place to go and have a look at. The actual castle itself was mainly abanadoned in the middle ages, and rather a lot of it has now fallen into the sea (whoops!), but there's still enough left to be pretty eerie. Worth seeing. Also worth getting the tides right, so you can pop down to the beach under the headland and see Merlin's Cave - a huge cave going right through, under the landward end of the headland by the isthmus. It's about 200m or so through, I'd say. Easily navigable and most impressive. Big caves are always cool. So-called because this is supposedly the cave where Merlin lived.

So although Tintagel the town wasn't much to write home about, the location was still pretty nice. It was also bang on the Cornish Coastal Path, which meant that we could spend a happy morning one day walking the 2 1/2 miles along the clifftops to Trebarwith Strand. Rebecca spent the time in her backpack, strapped to my back, kicking gently and singing. We ended up making it to Trebarwith Strand just as the tide came in enough to make the beach basically inaccessible, so we just turned around and climbed back up onto the path and went back about half a mile to shelter in an old quarry and eat hot Cornish pasties that we'd bought fresh from the oven a couple of hours earlier. Lovely morning out. The clifftops are great - high, vertiginous, and majestic. And, notably, not free from human interference. The cliffsides were quarried for slate, which means that there are several incredible old quarries still visible. My favorite was a huge cut into the cliff-face, about 100m deep and 200m wide. Standing out in the middle of this huge missing space was a single giant finger of inferior shale, about 3m square. As they'd quarried slowly down the slope, they'd left this standing proud. The end effect was like some odd manmade version of Monument Valley. Very impressive.

The visit had a bit of a general gardens, plants and outdoorsy theme, actually. We visited both the Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan, and spent two happy days wandering around amongst cool plants. The Eden Project is very interesting: I'd not realised quite how didactic it is. The general media profile of it is "Cool! Look at the domes!", and fails to impart the fact that it's actually trying to raise awareness and make important points about plant usage, crop patterns, and fair trading. Very much worthwhile on the "Wow!" factor, but a pleasant surprise to find out that it had a lot of intellectual clout as well. Rebecca liked the Eden Project because it was relatively flat at the bottom of the pit, so she could toddle around. And where it wasn't flat, she could sit on Daddy's shoulders and belt him around the head when bored. She fell asleep in the humid tropics biome, and snored gently all through the hot bit.

Heligan, by contrast, was more lovely than educational. If you've not heard of it, it was a grand Victorian manor house with heavily landscaped gardens. These included a number of exotic plants - rhododendrons, bamboos, and tree ferns (ponga) being particularly well represented. Between 1910 and 1920 or so, it fell into disuse and the gardens were basically abandoned. In 1991, a party of keen horticultural archaeologists bowled up and started renovating the place. It's now restored to its former glory (sans the manor house and outlying buildings, which are privately owned), with the overgrowth cleared, the landscaping restored, and the gardens working again. It's absolutely stunning, and well worth a shufti. The grounds include a number of smaller formal gardens, working farm areas, and some beautifully landscaped rolling woodland. Plus an area known as "The Jungle", in which a huge variety of lush vegetation clings to the sides of a small valley containing a series of ponds linked by streams. Lovely. Also includes Europe's largest totara, and a particularly nice New Zealand garden (where a lot of the plants from last year's Chelsea Gold Medal-winning NZ garden ended up). Style. Rebecca also had a good time here, spending a happy half-hour wandering around a large lawn in the middle of a lot of rhodos, and investigating the maypole (amusingly, on our arrival back in Cambridge, we discovered that a couple of our friends had spent a day carefully carving some old elm trunks into giant phallii, just too late for may day). A lovely day out, and highly recommended.

Handily, we were staying just around the corner (well, four miles) from the British Cycling Museum just outside of Slaughterbridge. An excellent museum, I must say. Exhibits ranging from wooden hobby-horses from the 1850s to the monocoque frame Chris Boardman used to win a Tour de France time-trial stage (and the maillot jaune he did it in). A fascinating building full of cycling memorabilia, ephemera, and dirty great big lumps of metal with wheels on. Fascinating stuff, and not just for the cycling anorak. Rebecca quietly fell asleep as soon as we pulled up, and remained asleep until right before we left.

On a more active cycling tip, we took a day, hired bikes in Wadebridge (from Bridge Bike Hire), and cycled up the Camel estuary to Padstow. It's a lovely wee (5 mile) stretch of cyclepath, constructed on the course of the old railway line. The estuary is most picturesque, and Padstow is a lovely wee village. Rebecca was in a Burley child trailer. As you'd expect from the most popular vehicle-free cycle route in the country, we saw quite a few other people doing the same thing we were. In Padstow, we had a bit of a wander, looked around the village, and had some lunch. Duly fed, we remounted and headed back to Wadebridge, and then on up following the Camel Trail to Bodmin. At Bodmin, due to a slight increase in Rebecca's irritability and the weather looking rather dodgy, we decided to forego the additional loop up onto the moor - next time, eh? Lovely riding, though. From a calm meander alongside a tidal estuary, to a mellow slight uphill ride through rustling woodlands - lovely. Highly recommend it if you're knocking around Cornwall and have a spare day out.

The Cornish people were uniformly friendly, but absolutely appalling drivers. You know how when you're in rural NZ, driving on narrow, windy country roads, all the locals get really hacked off because you don't know the roads particularly well and are thus reluctant to - for example - take blind hairpin bends at 90kph? Yeah. Cornwall's like that. At one point I was driving across Bodmin Moor (and no, we didn't see the beast, worse luck), and a mist came down. And then it thickened. I had maybe 75m visibility, on a very narrow, twisting road, full of blind corners. I was doing about 50mph and feeling a bit nervous at that, as I believe driving faster than you can see to be a Bad Thing. And lo! I was repeatedly tailgated - in one case, so close that I couldn't see the SUV's license plate. Today's clue: I'm not going to risk wrapping myself and my family around a tree just because you're an impatient tosser. And don't even get me started on the bloody tour busses. Not tailgating, but let's just say that they were positioning themselves assertively in some of the narrower lanes.

And because I've received several emails about this: I was bloody joking about the Fahrenheit 451 thing, OK? Yes, I've read it, and I was trying to be funny. Gorblimey.

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