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 A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| Monkeys! The ninja monkeys have pranked me with some gift points. I tried to thank them by answering their email but it wouldn’t go through. So I devised a new and unlikely way to express my gratitude. Posting about it in my blog would avoid the possibility of appearing to brag in the Newsfeed in contrast to all those who haven’t been pranked, and the monkeys would have done me the extra favour of giving me something to post about. Now that’s almost as valuable as the gift points. So here it is. Word count: 92 |
| Workspaces I see there’s a trend to displaying photos of one’s workspace in the Newsfeed these days. For a brief moment, I was tempted to take a pic of mine before good sense returned. No one would believe the mess I work in. Especially after seeing the beautifully neat and orderly spaces owned by others. |
| Sleeping I am frequently asked how I slept. Being of a literal mind, I usually answer that I don’t know because I was asleep. It seems strange to rate how we sleep when we’re unconscious for the duration of the experience. |
| Revolution! On Saturday I weakened. My excuse is the British Grand Prix but the truth is I weakened. I decided to take a break from the 7-day badges. They have become unforgiving taskmasters. It was time to assert my independence. Appropriately, as it happens, the date being so close to the hallowed 4th of July. I spent the day in happy immersion in Practice and Qualifying, with some digging in F1’s archives for dessert. And yesterday, the Sunday, I watched both the pre-race show (absolute nonsense as usual) and the Grand Prix (sporadic rainfall made it chaotic but fun). And today I regret nothing. In fact, I shall probably only review something if Read & Review presents me with something decent. I refuse to be controlled by the promise of a badge or an animation. Word count: 133 |
| Dreams of Elsewhere The 2018 version of Lost in Space imagines a planet whose surface is covered entirely by water. It’s a surprisingly attractive idea, an entire world made up of only one type of environment. I’ve dabbled in this area from a very early age. My oldest invention is a desert planet. Not like Dune - I take it further than that. In my invention the planet is also swept by high velocity winds with only occasional periods of calm. These winds have so scoured the surface with dust storms that the planet has been eroded into a near-perfect globe without hills, mountains or valleys. There are, however, just a few deep cracks in the surface that provide the sole place where life is possible. In these as well, water could be found and so provide the basis for small pockets of life to arise and develop. Such imagined worlds could easily be the basis for tales of an interesting and unusual kind, just as Dune is. But there is another world that is too perfect for life to intervene. This would be a planet composed entirely of chrome, highly polished and without flaw in its perfect roundness. A mirror ball turning slowly in some far off and unlikely solar system. Unpopulated, yes. But oh, what a perfect arena for frenzied and frictionless games of Speedball 2. If you don’t know the game, it’s well worth a google. Word count: 234 |
| Choking Do you ever get to know a certain action so well that, once it’s become almost automatic, just the thought of how it’s done throws you into confusion? I’ve noticed that this happens often, almost as though the universe was geared to trip us up whenever we think we have things mastered. Take my medicines, for example. Well, no, don’t take them, I’ll do that. After all, I’ve been taking some of them for decades so I ought to be really good at it. And I am, except that lately, I’ve been looking at the process. And I’ve started choking on them as a result. Nothing serious, just a coughing fit as a few drops of water go down the wrong way. But it’s caused by sudden lack of confidence that I know how to do this. That is ridiculous, of course - I’ve been swallowing tablets every day for twenty years and never had the slightest trouble with it. And now I’m thinking, “Do I throw in a whole gulp of water before swallowing or do I do it all in one smooth motion?” Which cause a sort of hesitation and I end up with a bit of both alternatives. Instant disaster. So I thought I’d write it down. Might give me more understanding of what is going on, I thought. And it has. Now I think that this is probably the cause of sportsmen “choking” at the last and most important hurdle. They’ve done it a hundred times in practice but now they must do it in competition. And suddenly the skill deserts them. Which is why they call it choking, of course. Word count: 274 |
| Forgotten Gems Sometimes I write notes to myself, reminders of ideas that I don't want to forget. And sometimes I forget to write them down. Probably the most interesting are the ones that make no sense when I read them later. There's this one, for instance: Ode to a bathtub. What on earth was I thinking? |
| Name That Sleuth! Watching the Boy play video games yesterday and I saw a credit for a game-producing company called Ricochet. What a great name for a fictional detective, I thought. Rick O'Shea. |
| Forests New England is all about trees. They cover the landscape in cloaking forests, invade the towns, supply the wood that builds the houses and their leaves define the seasons. They are winning the battle against humankind for I read somewhere that, in many areas in the North-east, the trees are reclaiming farms abandoned by those who preferred a softer lifestyle down South. What surprises me about the trees is their variety. Looking at photographs of the forests in Fall, it is easy to presume that these are deciduous forests, beeches, birches and maples, many of them familiar to Europeans. And so they are, but the pine rules this land too, combining in alliance with the seasonal trees in their claim to the land. There are dark pine forests climbing the slopes of the hills and mountains and firs intermingle with the deciduous trees of the lower regions. Yet these forests are somehow different from those few left to England. They do not have the height and full, leafy canopy that I am used to; something is missing. I have pondered on this a long time, wondering whether my memory deceived me or whether the trees here, inhabiting so much more an extreme climate than Britain's, have been unable to achieve that uninterrupted green canopy that every English forest creates. But I think I have the answer now. What is missing is the oak. All English forests attain maturity when the oaks win, when their huge and ponderous bulk eclipses all other trees. They become oak forests, mysterious places of gloom and leafy halls, and this is what I miss in New England. There are oaks in America; at least, they are called oaks, presumably because of some relation to the English oaks that the early colonists knew so well. But they are not the oaks of home - none of them attain the size and grandeur of the ancient English oak. And they do not rule the forests to become the sole creator of the very definition of "forest". Further North, I am sure the pines begin to dominate and these mixed forests of New England give way to the endless evergreens of Canada. But here variety rules and the forests are light and airy, with dappled sunshine sprinkling the leaf litter floor. It is easy to imagine Mohawk and Mohican, Iroquois and Algonquin, hunting through the forest glades, tomahawk and bow in hand, for these forests are as American as the English forest is European. It is not that New England disappoints in any way; merely that it is different from what I had expected. In many ways, the surprise has been how English it is, the narrow, winding roads, the quiet, reserved people, the constantly-changing weather. But that which defines New England in our minds, the forest, turns out to be more American than ever I had imagined. Word count: 479 |
| Funnier than Fiction Just heard a delightful misquote while watching practice for the Austrian Grand Prix: "He was the Jackal and Hyde of the sport." |
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