May 2004

May 30th, 2004. There will always be an England

Driving down from Edinburgh, we noticed a surprising number of cars with English flags flying from their windows. "Maybe there's a football match on," said Maggie.

Since Friday, I've only left the house to walk into the village and buy newspapers. Even so, I've noticed a rather large number of cars flying the flag. And, as far as I can gather, it is to show you support the football. Even so, I still tend to find it rather disturbing, seeing the red and white flag flying everywhere. Twenty years ago, it just wasn't something you saw other than on the church flagpole once or twice or year. Ten years ago, it was hardly common. Today, it's everywhere, and I can't help but think of all its nasty xenophobic and isolationist associations. It makes me want to go out one night, find as many cars as I can, tear the flags away and destroy them all.

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May 28th, 2004. Texlahoma

So, that's that. I've moved house.

There hasn't been much sleep in the past few days. Three or four hours per night, in fact. Today, I've been up since 1.30am, trying to get everything packed in time to set off at 5. I didn't make it, of course. I wouldn't have coped at all without Owen being extremely helpful, shifting boxes and packing the van, and generally saying "Caitlin, don't worry, it's going to be fine" every five minutes when I started to panic again. I owe him a thousand top-notch favours.

Finally, after getting the very last box and bag in the van, I picked up the cat's box and carried him outside. I went back inside to pick up the keys, stood in the middle of the living room, and burst into tears.

Bob and Maggie drove me down here, at breakneck speed.* The cat sat silent and wide-eyed, in his box, on my lap. I tried covering him over with a black cardigan, assuming the darkness would calm him down slightly and help him sleep; but after an hour or so the heat and stuffiness was making him pant like a dog. After I took it off he seemed to recover. When we arrived I released him in my bedroom; he dived under my duvet and has been there ever since.

I've had several great, supportive emails from people in the past week. Sorry I've not been able to reply yet; but thanks to all of you. Clearing up my email reply backlog starts here.

(I'm already addicted to this year's Big Brother. I think it's time to go to bed. I have a sleep backlog too.)

* For soap-opera fans who need to have some idea about how all the various people I talk about are related: Bob and Maggie are Owen and Sana's parents. If that means nothing anyway - well, you didn't really need to know then :-)

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May 26th, 2004. Ouch

My head always hurts on Wednesday mornings. I should learn to stick to gin at the pub and never be tempted to switch to cider.

Fittingly, we won the pub quiz! Plus, we had a very good question on my requested subject: very bad puns. "Two Eskimos were out canoeing. They tried to light a fire in their boat, but sank it - proving which well-known proverb?"*

Of course, the paint smell in the flat can't be helping. The spare bedrooms and the hallway were repainted yesterday; the living room today. The landlord has decided not to actually bother replacing the wallpaper that the letting agency have been saying I would have to replace for ages now. I'm convinced he's freezing the agency out and is going to let the flat out directly in future - given that the agency will have told him that he can only have two people living there legally without paying out several thousand pounds for building improvements.

The council have been fencing off the grass outside my living room, putting new gates in. They've also put up a new sign saying "No dog fouling". I have to agree - I've seen the local dogs playing football, and some of their tackles are just vicious.**

Yes, it's definitely the paint smell overnight that's giving me a headache. Not all that booze, no, definitely not. Has to be the paint. And now, I'd better go back home and keep on with all the packing I haven't done yet.

* You can't have your kayak and heat it.

** Sorry, but after one very bad pun comes along I just can't stop...

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May 24th, 2004. Regional speciality

As I'm moving away at the end of the week, I've been making sure I sample all the things in my local supermarket bakery that say "(Scotland Only)" on the price label. Morning rolls - check. Pancakes* - check. Potato scones - check. I know you can buy haggis down in England, so I'm not especially worried about that.

I thought I liked potato scones, but I realise now that that's because in the past, they've always been fried. Fresh from the bakery, they are just dense and tasteless. I can't believe how something so thin can be so heavy - they're pancakes made from lead.

It's the final pub quiz before I go tomorrow night. I have asked for there to be a question on Very Bad Puns. I don't care about winning, but it would be nice if my question made people smile.

* ie, the ones that are called Scotch pancakes elsewhere.

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May 21st, 2004. Countdown

One week to go before I move house. The Mother is already worried about what the cat might do to everything. "He's not going in the living room - I don't want him destroying the armchairs.* I don't want him going upstairs either. I want him to stay in the kitchen, next to the washing machine." She has already started relaying the better job adverts from the Grimsby Telegraph to me. It turns out that the best one was for a course that Ben applied for a year ago, and didn't get.

Bob and Maggie - who are driving me, all the cat, and everything - popped round yesterday, to meet me and make plans. I told my mother about them. "How much about you do they know?" she said. The truthful answer would be "well, everything that you don't want them to know, for a start." I can see that their meeting might be rather awkward.

* They are quite expensive leather armchairs, to be fair.

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May 19th, 2004. Flying in circles

Sometiems, I think that University didn't teach me anything useful. I learned how to dig holes with millimetre precision, and I can tell the difference between a Marnian chariot burial and a Yorkshire chariot burial. They're hardly useful life skills, though, and they're hardly useful career skills either.* What I did pick up, though, was something a little more subtle. I started to learn how to argue. I learned how to spot a logical gap and exploit it, or notice that evidence doesn't quite support a claim. More generally, I lost some of my teenage naïvety.**

This comes in very handy when people who are -- well, Just Wrong -- crop up, either in Real Life or here. And there seems to be a lot of it about lately. This site rarely features in-depth political debate, so I was quite surprised when, last week, someone popped up in the comments box with typical Daily Mail-style "Britain is full, all asylum seekers are con-men looking for an easy ride" stuff. At the same time, a right-wing Briton was floundering around on the Rum & Monkey message boards*** saying things like "Maxine Carr is evil and should be banged up for life; bring back the death penalty because murders have soared since the 1960s." Again, typical Daily Mail stuff.

Now, I was a bit suspicious that they might even be the same person, although they're probably not. Although the two arguments were on entirely different subjects, the style of argument was very similar, as if they were both reading from Debating Right-Wing Causes With Woolly Liberals ... For Dummies. Try to characterise the right-wing viewpoint as the 'alternative' one. State your views as fact, without providing any evidence. When pushed for firm evidence, provide some (possibly made-up) unattributed numbers, then add "I know this is true because I work for the government".**** Now, if you can think critically and coherently, these are clearly stupid and pointless arguments, if you have the time and effort to prove them wrong. To a lot of people, though, it might be convincing.

I couldn't help but think of this when reading an article in last Sunday's Observer: an interview with the teenage daughter of the Bee Enn Pee party leader, who is herself a party spokesman and has appeared in an election broadcast for them. She knows that the extremists are right, because her dad has told her so. The interviewer pointed out some official census statistics that directly contradict the things she states in the election broadcast...

" 'If that was true, I am sure my father would have told me,' she mutters. 'The Daily Mail seems sure that illegal immigration is causing terrible problems across the country. I am only 17. I can't be expected to know all the facts.' "

Now, when I was a teenager, I really was incredibly naïve. I would believe, word for word, anything my teachers or parents told me. Fortunately, my parents tried to steer me towards maths and science, and that in turn taught me not to just believe whoever shouts the loudest. Because of that, though, I'm always going to be sceptical about the motives of someone who pushes a teenager onto the podium, knowing that all she knows is what you've told her. As it states elsewhere in the article, their party "only survives because it manages to deceive its supporters as to its real aims and beliefs". Moreover, would you trust a party whose spokesman admits that she doesn't know what she's talking about?

(this has, obviously, been another "use your vote wisely, even though it's one of those crap elections noone bothers with" post. It was brought to you by the Think For Yourself Party.)

* unless you want to work at Hull Museum, of course.

** Now I'm just naïve, instead of very naïve.

*** this is unusual because most of the R&M board users - as opposed to the R&M writers - are American teenagers. Who have barely heard of Maxine Carr, for one thing.

**** or "my friend who works for the government told me this," or something like that.

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May 18th, 2004. Meet

There are lots of things that I've started to write here, and never managed to finish. The articles I was planning about The Ideal Local Pub, for example.

Peter, you see, has a Local Pub. It's so Local that people can phone him there and the staff will drag him to the phone. It's so Local that the staff have his phone number in case people are looking for him.

We had a blogmeet yesterday. Peter did, rather. I wandered in, early as usual. I've been to that pub once before, so the staff seemed vaguely familiar. "Are you waiting for Peter?" they said. "He'll be along soon, I'm sure." And, of course, he was.

It was a fairly small blogmeet, to be honest. Just me and him. Various other people had already sent their apologies. Every other regular that came to the bar said "Peter, aren't all your blog people coming today?" and he had to tell them: "yes, this is us."

We did have a quick chat, on the phone, to Z in Belgium. I was slightly at a loss for words, unfortunately. Hot weather there? Hot weather here too. The line was quiet and the pub's fruit machine was loud, so I kept missing bits of the conversation. Sorry, Z, I'm not very good on the phone.

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May 17th, 2004. Allocated Zones

It feels like summer's coming in, and summer is the season of the London summer holiday. It's eleven months since my last visit, and I'm starting to miss it. Edinburgh is an awful place to be in the summer* and Grimsby isn't exactly action-packed. When I see blue skies, I feel like wandering about my favourite parts of London; ambling around the Circle Line; lounging in Embankment Gardens or Greenwich Park; sneezing in the British Museum. I want to meet people standing on the steps of Waterloo Station;** walk along the banks of the river; or discover some interesting shops that I've never visited before.

Saturday's Guardian featured a series of photos of lost people, standing at the side of the street, asking strangers for help or just getting their bearings. Some had pieces of paper in their hands, and some had fold-out tourist maps. Most, though, were clearly carrying one particular thing. The London A-Z. The Underground map might be schematic and concise, but, for a fiver, the A-Z defines the whole of Greater London. All thirty-odd boroughs of it.

If you read The Rough Guide To London, it says:

"to find your way around every cranny of the city you need to invest in either an A-Z Atlas or a Nicholson Streetfinder."

You have to wonder, though, how many people bother to buy the A-Z's rival. It's the A-Z that's the definitive London. Its style may be cramped and hard to read sometimes, but that just echoes the city itself.

I think I've linked before to this article on navigating London, by Quinn Norton of ambiguous.org. It's one of my favourite pieces about London, and it says:

"the authors [of the A-Z] appear to believe that most british are semi-blind cryptographers- they write the names to everything very large and in ever conceivable direction, including over other names. if you're coming to london get the a-zed. i am rushing out right after this is written to procure my very own a-zed because i believe it is incredibly worth owning, though nearly useless as a navigation tool. i view the a-zed as a lens into the mind of the london gestalt and an invaluable bit of british anthropology."

The mass of streets and overlapping text that makes up central London give you the image of the city if not a convenient map of it. The Underground map is the idealised London, and the A-Z is the real thing. They are the perfect couple together; and having my A-Z sat next to me whilst writing this just makes me want to be back there.

* self-justification? Moi?

** beneath that big impressive memorial archway entrance that I can't remember the name of. The one that comes out overlooking the international concourse. Victory Arch or something like that.

10:56 Comments (5)

May 16th, 2004. Geekery again

Thanks to Gordon, I've been reading the latest updates on the Movable Type situation. The stupidest part of their new license was, they say, not supposed to be in there, so I've updated my original entry.

If you want to read something that had me nodding along to it, and that summarises the niggling doubts I've often had about Movable Type, read this article. It's very good.

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May 16th, 2004. Get ready for next year's chicken jokes

W would be terribly disappointed if I didn't write about the Eurovision at least once this year. I have to admit, I voted for the Ukraine - but also for Bosnia, just because it was just so camp. The Ukrainian entry, though - well, it was clearly going to win, because it was the only song with Proper Nonsense Lyrics. That's what the Eurovision's all about!

Terry Wogan gets on my nerves a little, though. We all know that everyone votes for their neighbours, Terry; there's no need to keep whinging about it every ten seconds. And he's so biased towards bland, MOR, Radio 2-friendly tunes like the German elevator-jazz rubbish, and against good stuff like Turkey's middle-Eastern ska attempt.*

But anyway. It's time for the answers to last week's quiz, because I've worked out that - as everybody is scoring either zero or one - you can now work out what the right answers are just by looking at what everyone else hasn't picked. Here we go.

Travel: the answer is B. The furthest inland I've been is Rüdesheim, Germany, which I'm pretty sure is more than 100 miles from the coast.

Insanity was the evil trick question. I do have a psychotic aunt, who has been on the telly. She's my mother's sister-in-law, though, so the answer is C.

Childhood: A. My first primary-school teacher did try to teach me French, but it didn't stick at all because she tried to use a mixture of actual and phonetic spelling, and I couldn't see the link between the two. I'm surprised JAL didn't get that one, because as we were in the same French class for most of our school years he should have remembered how bad at it I was.

I was slightly surprised, actually, that nobody scored more than one. Maybe, the next time I do a quiz, I should make it a little easier.

* although he had a point in wondering why on earth Serbia's 'My Lovely Fawn' was getting quite so many votes when it was completely un-memorable.

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May 15th, 2004. Openness

(quiz answers will be up soon, incidentally. Tomorrow, if I have the energy)

How much are you willing to tell people about yourself? How much do your friends know about you - and particularly, about what you desire?

The other night, I was sat at home watching a TV documentary, about the history of sex on the telly. It was fairly interesting in general, but there was one quote that stuck in my mind, from one of their voxpop pundits.* In the 60s, she said, we had the sexual revolution. In the 90s, on came the emotional revolution, when it became acceptable to go onto a TV chat show and talk about your innermost desires to an audience of thousands.

Naturally, being self-obsessed, I thought: "that's just like blogging!" I'm completely happy to come here and write down all my innermost desires**, and have them read by literally tens of people. Moreover, anything I write here gets archived in a way that appearing on TV doesn't. So, I'm thinking: was the internet partly responsible for this? If we'd had anything resembling the internet in the 1970s, would we all have been too repressed to write about our feelings in the same way that many of us do now? Or would emotional openness have naturally led from the ability to communicate like this?

In a way, you see, that's the biggest difference between my parents and myself. My parents - who grew right in the middle of the sexual revolution, and managed to skip it entirely - are firm believers in keeping yourself to yourself, and in not doing anything which might raise the neighbours' eyebrows.*** And they're ashamed of me, partly because I'm not like that. Their strategy in life is: sit tight, don't make a fuss, make everybody think you conform. I've tried both options, and I'm sure that openness is much healthier.

* From memory, I think it was by Rowan Pelling, editor of The Erotic Review.

** Well, most of them.

*** or lower the local house prices, I assume.

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May 14th, 2004. The geeky topic-of-the-moment that everyone else is talking about too

As this is Post 500, it would be nice if it was something more interesting. I'm sorry, but most of you probably won't be very interested.

Movable Type - which is used to power this site and many others - is to go paid-for with its next version. Yes, there's going to be a free version, but it's going to be useless to the greater majority of the userbase, because it's not multi-user. MT has always, as far as I know, mostly been used by the "power users" who are happy installing their own CGI programs and hacking their own templates. These are not people who like being restricted.* Furthermore, the free version can only be used on single-CPU computers. That's a really dumb clause - how the hell are you supposed to control what sort of servers your web-hosting people use?

This site is hosted, very generously, by Brian, along with six others and his own. So, according to the spiffy new Version 3.0 pricing chart, even though he's not a commercial developer he'd still have to pay $190 to run Movable Type - although if he signs up now it's a bargain $150! As he says, "when did they get all evil?"

(I did enjoy seeing them hoisted by their own petards software, though. If you read Mena Trott's piece on Why Charging You Is A Good Thing, you'll see it's followed by many, many trackback entries along the lines of "well, I'm dumping Movable Type, then".)

I'm not entirely sure what the future of this site is going to be. It depends entirely on what Brian wants to do. I don't think it's likely that he'll be going to version 3, though. I also think that the Trotts have just given Blogger Google a big hand with their world-domination plans - and the plans of whoever eventually manages to buy them.

UPDATE, May 16th '04: Six Apart have abandoned the single-CPU clause mentioned above. According to them, it was put in accidentally. I know software users regularly don't bother reading their licenses, but for a software company to not bother reading its own licenses is a little much. And their attempt to define what they mean by a weblog has only made their terms more confusing.

* Dirty-minded people, insert an S&M joke here if you like.

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May 13th, 2004. Hot and sunny

Yesterday was, I guess, my final trip to the doctor here. I walked out to the hospital, partly because it was a lovely day and partly because I didn't have the right change for the bus.

Edinburgh really does start to get rural south of Cameron Toll. There are little roadside cottages, instead of tall tenements. There are fields and hedges, streams and everything. And then, of course, the huge white hospital building. I stopped to read the sign at the entrance:

Edinburgh Royal Infirmary North Gate:
EMERGENCY (drop-off only)
The Simpson Centre for Reproductive Health
- Gynaecology (EMERGENCY)
- Maternity (EMERGENCY)
All wards and departments
X-Ray Department
Lots of other things I can't remember
University of Edinburgh Medical School

Being in Scotland, they didn't have the sign that they do at Grimsby General Hospital,* which I've always loved for its laconicness. "Highways Act 1959. No Highway".

The Doctor seemed much more friendly than the last time I visited her, which must have been about six months ago. She said what I've already been thinking: moving back in with the parents will either be A Very Good Thing or A Very Bad Thing, and it's impossible to tell which until it happens. I suppose I'll find out before long.

* or, as it's now called, the Sainted Princess Diana Of The Car Crash Hospital, or something along those lines.

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May 11th, 2004. I Have Never

Too stressed-out to write proper entries at the moment. However, last night when I couldn't sleep, I got up and wrote you a quick quiz about myself. In each section, there are 3 true statements and one false. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to spot the false one.

Travel

a) I have never been on a plane
b) I have never been more than 100 miles from the sea
c) All my family holidays were within England or Wales
d) My family holidays generally involved unusually large amounts of nudity.

Insanity

a) I once wrote a postcard to a famous person who, I was well aware, had been dead for over 50 years.
b) Friends once sent the police round to my flat, in case I was dead.
c) At least one of my close blood relations is clinically psychotic, and has featured in TV documentaries about their psychosis.
d) When I was a teenager, I fantasised about ways to lose one of my feet, so that I would be able to avoid PE lessons.

Childhood

a) When I was younger, I was a bit of a prodigy - at the age of 5 I could speak French, although I've completely forgotten it since.
b) When I was younger, I was a bit of a computer geek - I could write simple Basic programs when I was 3.
c) When I was younger I was very religious - so much so, I had ambitions of becoming the Messiah.
d) When I was younger, the one thing I would never, ever do, was wear costumes or fancy dress.

Have fun!

10:42 Comments (11)

May 8th, 2004. Quick thing

Forgot to say: I have another article up on Rum and Monkey. I'm slightly worried that it makes Margaret Thatcher look a little too human.

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May 7th, 2004. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry

What happens if you throw something at your telly so hard that the screen breaks? Does it really implode with a big flash of sparks like it's supposed to?

I'm only wondering because last night I watched a TV programme that really did get me fuming. A Channel 4 documentary about right-wing campaigners trying to persuade the goverment to keep refugees out of their local area, it really did get me angry about the self-interested, small-minded people it featured. People whose racism is so natural and ingrained, they don't even realise they're being racist. People whose main fears are rape, AIDS, and - more importantly - that local property prices will drop. People whose main 'research' sources are the right-wing tabloid newspapers.

What the programme didn't look into - and should have, if you ask me - was how much support the grass-roots campaigners were getting from reputable people and organisations. All the people on-screen were ordinary home-owners and businessmen, campaigning in their spare time. All very grass-roots and home-organised. Almost as an aside, though, the film-maker mentioned the large amounts of money that had been donated by the local district councils. He didn't try to look into why they had done it, or if there had been any opposition. Similarly, most of the campaigners' posters had been printed by local newspapers. The newspapers' logos were prominantly displayed. No mention, though, of why they were doing it; or if the film-maker had even tried to look into it. Did the newspapers really believe in the campaign, or were they just going for free advertising? It wasn't touched at all.

Sarah has posted recently on how it's important that you vote, even in local elections, because if you don't you'll help the far-right get in. The people on last night's TV kept insisting, firmly, that they're definitely not racists. Definitely not. They were, though, the thin end of the wedge; I'm sure that the racist parties were right behind their campaign.

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May 5th, 2004. My head hurts

One thing I won't miss when I move out of my flat is the number of people who knock on my door by mistake; or, just, knock on my door because they're lost. A lot of the addresses in my street are rather hard to find at first; but my flat isn't, so I often get random people coming to my house and saying "sorry to bother you, but I'm trying to find number 17" or wherever. And, then, there are several streets with similar names, and the street names aren't that easy to spot, so people often come to me when they're looking for the same number in a different street. Sunday night, someone tried to deliver me a takeaway by mistake. Yesterday, two random women came to the door looking for a room to let. I ummmed and aaahd a bit, then sent them away.

Yesterday was a strange kind of day, as it happens. A bumping-into-people kind of day. I bumped into J and W, two archaeologists I used to know. Not having seen them for years, it was rather nice.

(and then, last night, we won the pub quiz. Woohoo! Free booze! My head hurts now.)

10:50 Comments (5)

May 4th, 2004. Teenage regression

In my parents' village there is a village green. Every night, it fills up with the local teenagers. Having nothing to do, they sit around on the village green, outside the public toilets, drinking and smoking and just hanging around in the usual teenage way. I never did this, of course. For one thing, my parents would have killed me. For another, I assume I'd just have been ignored and/or beaten up.

On Saturday, though, we all had the chance to be teenage. Si had cooked lovely Indian food for everyone, and after it was eaten, we needed something else to do. As the pub was a bit far, we went as far as the children's playground on the edge of The Meadows. We played on the swings and roundabouts. We sat and drank; Owen sang and played guitar; and, generally, we relaxed.

A crowd was hanging about a hundred yards or so away, just in the trees. Quite a large crowd. It was, it turned out, the local teenagers, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Presumably we'd stolen their favourite Saturday night smoking-and-drinking spot. A few dared come near us, and take the spare swings. Some walked past and shouted at us. Most, though, stayed huddled in their crowd. Eventually, they drifted back into the night.

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May 1st, 2004. Little Britain

A few months ago, Iain left Edinburgh. He left to go wandering around eastern Europe; Prague, Budapest, Belgrade, working his way down into the Balkans. He's down somewhere in the Balkans at the moment. I think it's a shame, though, that he didn't stop a few more weeks in Prague or Budapest; because if he had, he'd have woken up suddenly back in the EU again.

Britain is being very quiet about European expansion. Everybody else is celebrating; we're not. It would upset all those people who seem to believe that we are a proud, independant nation shackled by all those nasty Brussels bureaucrats who want to legislate the shape of our bananas. It even gets into archaeology - last year, there was an archaeological TV series explaining that Britain has always been completely different, culturally, from Europe.* As a former archaeologist, I'd like to point out that this is a rather large exaggeration, and, if anyone suggests it, I automatically assume that they're saying it on the basis of their own current political views.**

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only English person who really believes themselves to be European too. This isn't because I'm widely-travelled - I've never been much further away than Paris or Bonn, and you can count the number of times I've left the UK on one hand. It's just part of my national identity. I'm English. I'm British. I feel a bit Scottish, because it's where I live. I like to think I feel a bit Scandinavian too. But, on top of all these, I'm a European.

The Little Englanders tend to claim that you can't have multiple national identities like this. They're wrong, of course. I'm going to write more about this soon - if I don't, remind me.

* I think it was written and presented by Francis Pryor, but I'm not 100% sure.

** although I'm just guessing, and have no idea what the views of that programme's makers are.

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