Roger Greenhalgh

Mufti for Hyderabad and Hanley

2007-12-29T14:33:00.001Z

It's the last Saturday afternoon of 2007, and I am perusing my wardrobe for a set of apparel that will do me for standing on Hanley Bus Station at midnight tonight, and still be practicable garb for the streets of Hyderabad in a few days time. It'll get lounged in at a couple of airports on the way, and probably discarded well before I get to Kathmandu in a fortnight or so. Hmmm. That's the thing about the ubiquitous 'jeans and a t-shirt'. It sort of works OK everywhere... mostly.

I've been wandering about for months in a brilliant heavy woollen jacket that I bought in the market in Murmansk this summer. While wearing it, the mildest burst of exercise brings one out in a serious sweat. It's clearly fine for Russian winters, and works well for British ones too. But certainly not the overmantle for Bangalore. I'll travel light and look for something there, if necessary.

OK, this is an insight into how much planning has gone in to this next two weeks: I've got a set of maps I bought on Amazon, enough bought-online tickets to get me by bus to Heathrow tonight and by plane to Cochin via Bahrain tomorrow, one rucksack of the remaining clean jeans and t-shirts from a Matalan binge this summer, and my rather battered leather Indiana Jones hat. That's about it. A few bits and bobs like a trusty Coleman petrol stove; a water purefier, a Russian leatherman one-piece toolkit, and a camera. We're off to Katmandu on an autorickshaw...

Tangrams, titles and tantrums

2007-12-07T18:37:00.000Z

I've been herding cats this last few weeks. The challenge has been to get 15 households to agree the joint purchase of a large adjoining plot of land, so that it can subsequently be divided up agreeably between them.

There was no way that the vendor was going to tackle 15 separate sets of negotiations and conveyances, so we formed a company to make the single purchase outright, and will then, post-purchase, divide the land equitably between the shareholders.

I would like to think that we are on the home straight now... and it feels like it's been a great way of cementing relationships between neighbours. We've had no tantrums, we've agreed generally how we ought to re-apportion the title, and I can now see a point in mastering the ancient Chinese art of tangrams - it helps you slice up complicated shapes into smaller complicated shapes!

It's fifteen years since I served my time in the classroom, but the old adage about managing meetings (or classes) still holds... you're really managing three strands concurrently - the time, the content, and the emotion. Can you reach consensus before the bell rings?

All's well so far. Once we exchange contracts, it'll feel like End of Term. Once we complete, it'll feel like Graduation. And once we're banging fenceposts in... then I hope will feel like getting that first paycheck. Fingers crossed...

Sub judice - no comment

2007-10-07T22:40:00.000Z

I would love to comment, but it seems that when something is sub judice, then to comment would be inviting contempt of court. Suffice to say that when our office got broken into earlier this week, it presented a bit of an enigma. The weirdest choice of stuff was taken... and similarly weird choice of very nickable stuff was ignored and left. Can't help wondering what that was about... But it did remind me of a situation many years ago when we got broken into once, at home. The miscreant in this case had recently escaped from an institution, and was clearly so institutionalised that he tidied up behind him... well, sort of... He'd sat on the sofa and peeled an orange... then hidden the resulting orange peel inside my mother's copper kettle. He'd broken a window pane on the back door, to get in... then he'd carefully swept up the broken glass, and hidden it inside the washing machine. (My mother only found it the day after, when her washing load started to make a strange scraping noise when it went around!) Anyway, the fugitive had then phoned his Gran up in Glasgow. (A check of the last number dialled returned that gem.) The boys in blue then just phoned up the McBoys in Tartan, whoduly staked out the station in Glasgow, and 'abracadabra', the suspect stepped off the next train there and into their waiting handcuffs, it seems. Best of all, the loose change had fallen out of his pockets when sitting on our sofa, and dropped down behind the cushions. So, overall, he made a net loss on his burglary. Clearly, advanced burglary skills take a bit of acquiring, and neither of these culprits had got their Jemmy and Swag sack badge at Boy Scouts. Best I can say, on the record, in the circumstances, then, is

No comment

Beauty in the eye of the beholder

2007-09-30T20:49:00.001Z

I've been messing about with a Munga Jeep today, preparing it for its forthcoming MoT test. I rewired the lights, and fixed the petrol gauge sender unit. The gameplan is to drive it to Mongolia next summer, so it sort of helps (a) if things work and (b) that you know how to fix them if and when they don't.

I can't really decide if it's beautiful or ugly. You see, it's both. It's boxy and square and very very basic. But actually those are really great virtues... it was built in the 1960s as a general purpose Eastern Bloc military vehicle... so it would get a bit of a battering and some heavy handling from everyday soldiers. It has shackles on it that are there so you can pop a parachute on it and drop it out of a plane. Most chunks of it seem designed so that they can be mended or adjusted with a big hammer and some baler twine (the agricultural equivalent of Gaffer Tape). I do have a huge manual for it, (one in German and one in English), but most things are so obvious I haven't had to consult them.

As it happens, I also recently started running a much more modern Jeep Cherokee. Last week a mysterious warning light came on, on the dashboard. Sorting out precisely what's causing the fault, and whether it's a genuine fault or just a fault of the fault reporting has been a nightmare. I've spent hours tracing cables and checking hoses all of which are incredibly inaccesible, and mostly unmentioned in the manual. A week later and I'm still not much nearer with diagnosing it.

Maybe these sorts of vehicles are like babies. If they are your own and you understand all their idiosyncracies, then they are beautiful. If they are someone else's, then they are ugly and messy and unpredictable and noisy. Objectivity...? Pah...!

Reaching out for the Event Horizon

2007-09-28T15:50:00.000Z

Smug, or what, eh? Talk about pushing one's boundaries, but today I decided I would tackle the Event Horizon.

I run a website that collates a fairly large calendar of events. Of course, in the interests of keeping one's audience happy, one tries to make the calendar stretch as far forward into the future as possible, and have a decent spread of events from each region, and a good balance related to each of the website's different topics.

So, I needed a way of monitoring which areas were getting a bit thin (so we could focus our event-gathering activities to redress this). Well, superficially, that's easy... just look in the database for how far ahead the events reach... you might think?

Well, NO. You see, the dates of things like Trade Shows, Mother's Day and Christmas (is there a difference?) and even ITLAP Day and the like, are known long into the future. They are right out on the thin end of the tail of the normal distribution of dates you know or can easily find out about. And stuff that's going to happen in the next few weeks... well, if it's well publicised, that's easy to collate as well. So, how does one easily judge how much of the in-between stuff one has? Just how much vision of future events does one's web calendar have?

I dusted off my statistics and sampling notes, and had a play with some maths.

Really, when collecting events for my calendar, I've just sampled a subset of all the actual events that are out there in the real world. If I plotted how many of them are known for each day, I'd get a normal distribution curve... and a good way of measuring the spread of such a curve is its Standard Deviation (SD). Now, my distant memory of statistics and probability tells me that 95% of the variation is held within 1.96 SDs of the mean. And armed with that simple method, I can now calculate my Event Horizon... Within what span do I believe 95% of my events fall?

Business Management : 06 December 2007
Crops & Grassland : 30 November 2007
Environment : 30 November 2007
Equine : 02 November 2007
Equipment : 02 January 2008
Food & Drink : 28 November 2007
Horticulture : 14 November 2007
Livestock Enterprises : 04 December 2007
Renewable Energy : 04 December 2007
Soils & Water : 04 December 2007
Tourism and Recreation : 16 November 2007
Veterinary : 02 November 2007

So, it looks like my forward vision for bunny-cuddling and pony-prancing shebangs is fading. Cool. I'll put on my puffa jacket and phone Rolf Harris...

The Great Outdoors

2007-09-23T19:12:00.000Z

Even though I live in a country where the state of the weather is one of the commonest themes of casual conversation, there's something about the "Great Outdoors" that makes one want to keep getting out into it!

Today my dog, a friend and I walked for a few hours around Cannock Chase. In parts it was beautifully quiet and green and peaceful; at times we were invaded by a horde of Triathlon-ers (?) running cycling and canoeing, but it was exhilarating seeing these members of the great British Public getting their fixes, too, in the Great Outdoors. There were cohorts of Ramblers in knitted bobble-hats; occasional horse-riders, and innumerable walkers of dogs-with-a-stick (including mine).

I wonder what it is that's so specially theraputic about it? I just take if for granted... it's My Fix, too.

Well, a trawl around on Google in search of some theories gives me the impression that there might be quite a few components involved. I learned that microbes are destroyed by hydroxyl radicals that are floating about naturally in "fresh air", and that cabin fever is a slang term for a claustrophobic reaction brought upon by prolonged isolation in a fairly confined space. Still all a bit vague.

I see some recent entrepreneurs in Poland are having a go at militarne pikniki which seems to involve eating sandwiches in a field filled with old rocket launchers. I still think it's the hydroxyl radicals and not the proximity to defunct weapons that provides the fix, though. The tanks and guns are just a lure.

I also read that when they were filming Das Boot in 1981 the actors were required to stay indoors in order to maintain a suitably authentic pallid appearance. I wonder if they were allowed a window open for a little ventilation and a snort of a few hydroxyl radicals?

Enigma Variations - variations on the original theme of Station X

2007-09-21T20:08:00.000Z

Went to a meeting today at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire. I'm allowed to say that nowadays. If I'd been writing this in the 1940s, I'd have had to say

Went to a meeting today at Station X.

You see, this was once a place steeped in great secrecy. You could only work here if you could do the Daily Telegraph crossword in under 12 minutes. No kidding. The chaps here were seriously into intelligence. (Especially one chap called Alan Turing, who eventually became particularly interested in artificial intelligence.) There's a special feel of utility about the place. The unit graced with the name of "Hut One" is one of the few still hanging on from 1939 that boasts a placard declaring its purpose... "Wireless Telegraphy Station". Nowadays, though, it's morse keys are silent. A cottage in the grounds of Station X bears the name "Enigma Cottage", and adjoins the converted tack room and stable where Alan Turing worked. "Enigma" was the name of the message-ciphering machine used by the German forces during World War Two. So, it was on this site that the cohort of crossword-doers applied their combined ingenuity to the building of a machine that could decrypt the Enigma code.

Well. this they did, after several attempts coming up with the Bombe machines. which essentially rattled through a great many possible transliterations of the code, applying some rules which discarded those combinations that looked unlikely and leaving a much smaller number of possible solutions which were then eyeballed manually.

Whilst allegedly taking a couple of years off the war, this was to be the start of much bigger things... in more than one sense... The Colossus computer was also subsequently built here, to crack the later German Lorenz teleprinter codes. It's there on view in its full glory for public view.

It's a strange place, sandwiched in the middle of fancy new business parks, offices, and residential developments. The park is now run by a heritage trust, and is a strange blend of museum exhibits and business incubator units struggling hard to shake off the patina of past decades. There's something rather appealing about the rectangular brick buildings, metal-framed windows, "Keep Left" bollards, red "Fire" buckets and all the trappings of their previous period of industriousness. Later in the day I dropped into nearby Milton Keynes, one of several British new towns that have demonstrated a whole new approach to what one can do with grass and concrete. But somehow, walking around Station X and listening to the birdsong in the September sunshine, it still felt very human, very personal... and strangely, quite endearing. Or, maybe I've just spent too long in Murmansk recently, to be objective.

Back to Blighty

2007-09-15T21:00:00.000Z

Crossed the Channel today from Dunkerque to Dover, and as I wandered into the terminal to buy the ticket, found myself whistling 'Lili Marlene', a rather haunting song by Marlene Dietrich. I admit that the words going through my head weren't hers, though. They were an equally sad and less kind variant since immortalised by Ewan McColl, and known as the "D-Day Dodgers".

We are the D-Day Dodgers, out in Italy,
Always on the vino, always on the spree,
Eighth Army skivers and their tanks,
We go to war in ties like swanks.
For we're the D-Day Dodgers, in sunny Italy.

We landed at Salerno, a holiday with pay.
Jerry brought his bands out, to cheer us on his way,
Showed us the sights and gave us tea,
We all sang songs, the beer was free.
For we're the D-Day Dodgers, the lads that D-Day dodged.

Palermo and Cassino were taken in our stride,
We didn't go to fight there, we just went for the ride,
Anzio and Sangro are just names,
We only went to look for dames,
For we're the D-Day Dodgers, in sunny Italy.

On our way to Florence, we had a lovely time,
Drove a bus from Rimini, right through the Gothic Line,
Then to Bologna we did go,
Went bathing in the River Po,
For we're the D-Day Dodgers, the lads that D-Day dodged.

We hear the boys in France are going home on leave,
After six months service, a shame they're not relieved,
We're told to carry on, a few more years,
Because our wives, don't shed no tears,
For we're the D-Day Dodgers, in far-off Italy.

Once we had a "blue light" that we were going home,
Back to dear old Blighty, never more to roam,
Then someone whispered:'In France we'll fight,'
We said: 'Get lost, we'll just sit tight,'
For we're the D-Day Dodgers, the lads that D-Day dodged.

Dear Lady Astor, you think you know a lot,
Standing on a platform and talking tommy rot,
Dear England's sweetheart and her pride,
We think your mouth is much too wide -
That's from your D-Day Dodgers, in sunny Italy.

Look around the hillsides, through the mist and rain,
See the scattered crosses, some that bear no name,
Heartbreak and toil and suffering gone,
The lads beneath, they slumber on,
And they're the D-Day Dodgers, who'll stay in Italy.

A strange song, such pathos, such an evocative mix of positive and negative. I suppose that's connected to with how it feels at the end of a journey like this... a combination of glad to be home, and sad at stuff that's left behind .

The song, too, uses the word Blighty. Apparently, this was British soldier's slang for their British homeland, although paradoxically its derivation is a Hindustani word meaning "foreign".

And just for a few hours of being back on British soil, after three weeks away, I find myself ironically looking at the landscape and towns we pass through as though they too were foreign... Force of habit, I guess!

He who pays the piper calls the tune

2007-09-14T22:02:00.000Z

I've long been intriegued by the German mania for orderliness, and my visit to the Hanseatic city of Lübeck gave me some further affirmation of my growing conviction that what I believe is called Gründlichkeit is deeply ingrained in the German psyche. It's a characteristic that at the same time both horrifies and humbles me. I'm glad to be humbled, but my own more comfortable relationship with chaos makes me take a sharp intake of breathe.

My attention was first aroused while driving through Schleswig-Holstein. At first awestruck by the sheer volume of windturbines; I passed more neatly aligned rows of them in half an hour here than a day's travel across Anglesey yields. I sat (in my outstandingly dirty Jeep) in an immaculately groomed and purposefully engineered layby wondering how many English Public Enquiries one would have to battle through in the UK to achieve this? Humbled. All a tribute to planners and the local construction industry. I doff my cap in reverence.

There's a certain ad hoc-ness about British builders that's well known. "It looked like a building site" is an English phrase used to describe a mess. The phrase may not travel so well here. I got a reminder of that later in the day, in St Mary's, where a chunk of building stone dropped by a careless mason a few centuries ago is now labelled the Teufelstein (Devil's Stone), a historic reminder to later generations of the trowel-trades that tidying up at the end of a job is virtuous.

The Hospital of the Holy Spirit, too, must have been setting privacy standards in health care for the elderly since the Middle Ages. The rows of sickbeds each in their own enclosure makes an interesting contrast with contemporary English geriatric wards. Apparently these were last used up until 1969, and how the aroma of pee and lavender was dealt with remains undocumented. Not so good for social interaction, but everything clearly in its place for the last few centuries.

The merchants of this city, too, knew something about sorting things out. The shipping merchants met in a city-centre pub and wheeled and dealed over their shipping arrangements around this part of the globe, and for many traded commodities it was the Hanseatic League that pretty much had an iron grip on pricing and shipping since its first appearance in the 12th century. The situation got a bit flaky in the late 1500s but the League survived until 1892. Even then the tenacity of the "free" Hanseatic cities continued. Indeed, the Senate of Lübeck did not permit Adolf Hitler to speak in Lübeck during his election campaign. Powerful chaps, these.

The power of being organised didn't escape the notice of the craftsmen of Lubeck, either. In the middle ages their formation into guilds allowed them to take on the Church and various civil authorities. Craftsmen built personalised marks of authentication of origin into their work, known as Kennzeichen, (and this word has to this day crept into the amazingly ordered system of German car numberplate registration)

Organisation is something that has to be practiced and perfected, too, if one is to overcome the adversity that humanity, society and Mother Nature sometimes throws at you. Later on in Travemunde, the seaport and seaside neighbour of Lubeck, the THW (Technische Hilfswerk) had turned up for a practice at dealing with an oilspill. Every piece of shiny new equipment seemed like something in the same league as those in my childhood's Thunderbirds TV show. The beach was fenced off. The sand was carefully levelled. Temporary roadways were laid. The manuals were to hand. The catering was laid on. Not a detail was missed. Only the orchestra for the theme music was missing... only I expect they were timed to arrive later on.

Tough being Teutonic

2007-09-12T18:36:00.000Z

It's hard to know just how tough it was being Teutonic. Malbork Castle, in Poland, recreates an awesome location of the stronghold of an order of Teutonic knights. These chaps managed a strange blend of a secular, monastic lifestyle with a sort of sword-and-sandals swashbuckling looking-after-the locals philosophy. The castle is a beautifully restored monastic and military stronghold of imposing size and position, which gives huge insight into the lifestyle of the times. The current Poland has a long history of boundary change, occupation, existence and allegiance. Whilst we English are used to our castles and ancient monuments being damp draughty crumbling edifices perched on lofty rock outcrops, this site is a very different experience.

Latvian Lunch

2007-09-10T14:11:00.000Z

Lunchtime in Riga is a wholesome affair. A Latvian lunch in the market hall is a good way to watch the world go by over a glass of Kvas and a plate of hot goodies straight from the cookhouse. There's one of everything on display, and that includes the dinners.

To market, to market, to buy a fat hen...

And on the seventh day

2007-09-09T21:30:00.000Z

Apples a pound, pears, Marrows as big as bears, Turnips with knobs on, Tatties wi' clogs on, The only stall to sell 2 and ninepence worth for three bob...

In Russia the roadways are a giant shopfront for spare produce, and Sunday's no exception.

Drivers can't get too carried away with the window-shopping, though. The road must always be watched for hazards. They might be physical ones, such as potholes and ruts... Russian roads are build on a bed of sand, so the effects of settlement and of winter weathering all take their toll. Roadworks do happen, and when they do, signage and traffic control are a rare luxury. There's a sort of free-for-all in which traffic and repair workers weave a slow dance around each other, each in separate worlds of focussed concentration.

They might be human ones. The DNC are frequently around the next bend with a big hat and a baton at the ready.

This month's special DNC toys are radar speed guns. I think every DNC officer in the region had been on a speed-trap course and was keen this week to do a bit of practical. The headlight-flashing of oncoming traffic is a good sign that the boys-in-blue are just ahead.

St.Petersburg, city of contrasts

2007-09-08T23:28:00.000Z

Round every corner in St.Petersburg there is a surprise. Saturday especially is not a quiet day here... the residents go out and either go about their business, or go about having a change from their usual business.

In places, it seems like every second building is historic; there's also a huge amount of renovation taking place, and a growing European feel around in the high street, Nevsky Prospekt, and its environs. The evident number of tourists, both Russian and international, clearly has huge influence on the city's economy and the pitch of almost every shop and restaurant indicates this.

The last few centuries of Russians certainly knew how to build on a grand scale, here. Clearly generations of architects have asked their clients

Would you like it in L, XL, or XXL?

The buzz is non-stop. If you need to buy stationary supplies at midnight, you can do so. Entrepreneurship is certainly well understood here. And nice to see the all-too-familiar KFC and MacDonalds outlets actually being dwarfed by the range of other less global offerings around them.

The wedding industry, too, flourishes, on a Saturday. Russian weddings apparently can run on over a couple of days, and at one point hauling the entourage of witnesses around a series of monuments and memorials is a must-do. The river figures highly in all this, and in the spirit of entrepreneurship, an array of facilitators is readily on hand to provide doves, fireworks, photos, bears, boats... indeed everything the modern bride and groom could want. The stretch-limousine trade has certainly been working overtime to support this niche...

All quiet on the Western Front

2007-09-07T18:44:00.000Z

I don't like it, Olga... it's too quiet...

Friday. The streets are almost empty. The local babushkas aren't at home knitting, they are pacing up and down the square, fretting...

Not much soccer practice going on today, it seems. Where are the people of Lodenoye Pole? Have they discovered the siesta, perhaps?

Even when we get to Saint Petersburg, the car park at the out-of-town shopping mall is almost empty. Is it the economy that keeps people away from spending their hard-earned roubles in IKEA, we wonder? Is the manager of MediaMarkt wondering why the ker-ching of the cash-register is replaced by an ominous silence?

Well, in Ulyanovsk, Lenin's birthplace, the streets will be empty next Wednesday for a different reason: it's Day of Conception, it seems. Under Ulyanovsk's "Give Birth to a Patriot" scheme, those who give birth on June 12th, Lenin's birthday, will get a prize.

It seems that Russia has had a bit of a population crisis during the last decade, and the birth rate fell to 1.3%. This year, the incentive of winning a new Sports Utility Vehicle has put the Ulyanovsk region's birth rate up to 4.5%, it seems.

So, maybe it's just quiet today because couples are taking Friday afternoon off and doing their bit for mother Russia in good time for a June 12th outcome. We'll just have to wait a year and see...

Vauxhall

2007-09-06T19:24:00.000Z

Murmansk. "Largest city north of the Arctic Circle." One cannot disagree with that accolade. Arrived in Murmansk at night-time, and a two hour random trawl of the city didn't reveal any obvious hotel. Not in the principal business district, with the banks; not in the classier suburbs, either. A word with a helpful Murmanskovite revealed that one should try near the station. 100% obvious, in hindsight! The station (vokzal) is easy to find too, and as with all the Russian station building's I've encountered, magnificent... worthy of such a city.

There are various theories as to why the Russian word for a major railway station is vokzal, which coincides with the 19th century transliteration of "Vauxhall". One apocryphal tale is that a Russian delegation once visited London's Vauxhall station in 1840, and mistook the name for a generic title of this type of building. There's also a variation on this, being that Czar Nicholas I, visiting London in 1844, was taken to see the trains at Vauxhall and made the same mistake.

A more likely explanation is that the first Russian railway, constructed in 1837, ran from St.Petersburg via Tsarskoye Selo to Pavlovsk, where an extensive set of Pleasure Gardens had earlier been established, and when (a year later) a music and entertainment pavilion was constructed at the railway terminus, this pavilion was called the Vokzal in homage to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in London. The name soon came to be applied to the station itself, being the principal gateway that most visitors used to enter the gardens. Whatever the truth, it's certainly an easy way or remembering the Russian word for station.

And sure enough, the Meridian turned out to be a fairly European affair, a block away from bus and rail termini.

Beyond the station lies the railway sidings, a hustle of activity and temporary home to huge trains of coal wagons of enormous scale.

Passenger trains to Moscow and St.Petersburg await departure with an air of great importance and circumstance. These are no casual commutes. Families, husbands, workmates, friends and well-wishers accumulate to bid farewells, take photos, wave and witness. All under the patient and watchful eyes of the provodinizas, burly, dour and efficient guardians of each carriage. One's always in good hands with this bastion of control.

The railway and the docks are the lifeblood of this city. The road is is a humble cousin, entering unceremoniously through the back door. Everyone crosses this bridge. East to west, dock to doorstep, day to night, work to home. It's a gallery on the world. Spend an hour on here with a camera and Mumansk is in your pocket.

It's a wrap.

The last drag

2007-09-04T15:00:00.000Z

How many times have you said

OK... That one will be my last... ?

Well, this chap didn't get the chance, and nor did many of his WW2 colleagues. There seems to be a tradition here, in Russia, of bringing a last cigarette, and even a last drink, to the graveside, on occasions of remembrance.

This particular war memorial is a very evocative place. The vision of the rows of helmets make the evidence of such loss of life and on such a scale a very human and personal experience.

The road south to Murmansk and beyond is lined with military memorials. The fresh flowers make the reality of these memories and the impact of times past on these communities very clear. This memorial's miles away from anywhere, (geographically), but clearly very close to some people (emotionally). A thought provoking journey, in every way.

Throw another Nickel in

2007-09-04T09:38:00.000Z

Apparently, Russia produces about a fifth of the world's nickel, and holds over 40% of the world's known nickel resources. It's valuable stuff. Put a bit in steel or cast iron, and it reduces corrosion. You can plate other metals with it, or form alloys with them, such as bronze. It's just the job for making glass green. All round a pretty useful and valuable commodity, and known about since 3,500 BC, too. So, nickel's one of those things that makes the modern world go round.

Nickel, surprise, surprise, is produced in Nikel, an industrial town way up north at the top of the Kola peninsula, Russia. The clue is in the name. Nickel, then, has left its mark on the town, (lexicographically, so to speak...) and on the landscape too, in a different sort of way.

I had the dubious pleasure today of wandering through the town. The slough of industrial waste pervades everything. The bite of sulphur in the atmosphere is unmistakeable. A heavy haze hangs in the air. The highway through town is a channel seared through a relentless accumulation of grime. A once proud statue of its past father looks on, sightlessly, across the scarred panorama. I feel sure this powerhouse, this edifice to industrialisation, was once a proud and new example of a growing nation's rich prospect.

I've been getting through camera batteries these last few days like there's no tomorrow. And low grade batteries are about as much use as a chocolate teapot. Their lifetime (and that of such a hypothetical receptacle) is brief and limted to say the least. So I dig deeper into my pockets and buy the more capable NiCad (Nickel-Cadmium) ones. I'm beginning to see something of the cost of my electrochemical extravagances.

This devastation is part of the cost of a nation's wealth. What is the price, one wonders, then, of experience?

Tulips from Hamster Jam

2007-09-03T20:43:00.000Z

The region south east of NordKapp abounds with little rodents. Collared lemmings, apparently. Sit still anywhere for a while and they scurry out from the undergrowth and fussick about for food. They have a very industrious air about them, and from my observations seem fairly territorial... the approach of another fellow of the species usually results in tones of indignation.

They remind me strongly of the various pet hamsters that I have been aquainted with in childhood, though in this case their energetic scurrying leaves little need for the exercise wheel - hard to imagine the dulcet tones of a thousand squeaky wheels floating across the fjord.

The popular myth that lemmings undergo mass suicides in times of population stress is apparently falacious. On the other hand, there's plenty of evidence here that being a lemming anywhere near the Arctic Highway is not all roses... the road to Kirkenes is almost paved with lemming roadkill in places!

Raising exaltation by lowering expectations...

2007-09-03T12:36:00.000Z

The guide books reckon the drive from the NordKapp region eastwards to Kirkenes and the northern Russian border to be dull, and I expect that will be because this bit of the Arctic Highway just hugs the northern Finnish border, through a fairly unspectacular inland landscape, compared with the earlier majestic route up the west coast from the Lofoten islands. Well, they should have tried the more northerly route closer to the coast... it's filled with an unexpected variety.

Maybe my expectations had been lowered by the guide, and so the regularly changing geology was a bonus. There were points at which one could have been in Scotland (and geologically, you are, as I understand the section of Scotland above the Great Glen to have slithered down once from near here... plate tectonics and all that... and that some of the mountain-building processes that produced much of the Scots landscape were also responsible for parts of the Norwegian landscape). But almost no people, almost no mosquitos, and open views that are routinely awesome.

Close to the Edge

2007-09-02T20:27:00.000Z

Arrived at the North Cape. Dry land finishes here. Parked the Jeep and walked to the edge. Funny... the little bit of land to the left seems to jutt out into the sea further northwards than the North Cape. Can this be true?

Hammerfest... allegedly the most northerly town in the world

2007-09-01T15:45:00.000Z

Hammerfest is a sort of Sullom Voe with reindeer. Only further north. And with possibly a better corner shop, (if you're into ethnic foods.)

You can seemingly buy delicacies from every continent here, so if you fancy whistling up a stir-fry with authentic ingredients, a spot of green ginger, a better selection of goodies than in a Chinatown grocers, or a Walsall Balti house, just pop up to 70°39′N 23°41′E / 70.65, 23.683 and you're in luck.

Now, I never worked out whom the market is for this... be it the colourful range of shipboard employees that must call by here, or passengers on the various "explorer" trips that make the pilgrimage here. But it's a must for a mean curry.

Now the chaps along the road at Honningsvåg may not be so enamoured at Hammerfest's fame. You see, they live even further north, at 70° 58' , but as they aren't officially a town, it doesn't count, it seems.

Indeed, the North Cape is a place full of paradoxes. The actual North Cape is a different small isthmus a little bit West of the one with the visitor centre on it (but don't tell anyone). And it's a nice visitor centre... if you've got a spare radar-listening dome to hand... they make a lovely coffee-shop...

66 degrees 33 minutes

2007-08-31T17:41:00.000Z

Driving over the Saltfjellet one meets an unimposing road sign...

Welcome to the Arctic Circle

Now in late August - early September it's a bit thin on snow, Father Christmas, polar bears, or any of the white ice-bound mental trappings that we British associate with anything using the word "Arctic" As it happens, I was clothed comfortably in a T-shirt at the time, and if I had brought that great British ice-cream and sponge dessert delicacy, an "Arctic Roll", with me, it would soon have melted. Oh, and a few yards further up the road, you can pop into the 'Arctic Circle Experience', have a coffee and a hot-dog, buy a postcard, nip to the loo in comfort... (handy when there are no trees around!) Apparently the railway route across here (known as the 'Road of Blood') was constructed in 1942-45 by Russian PoW's of the occupying German regime. That's documented in humbler circumstances at the local museum. How these chaps must have longed for a hot coffee and a schnitzel. Unfortunate timing.

Just up the road from here the Saltfjettet opens out tundra-like into an expanse of sparse birchwood and bilberry struggling between ice-smoothed rocky hummocks and shallow dark pools. Many years ago we had camped here for several days, and I'd regaled my children with tales of 'Nøkken', a Nordic water spirit who lurks in such places. Spookily, we passed the spot and after a bit of wandering around the fell, I located the pool we had camped by. Nøkken was still there in his pool, the pale top of his head just visible in the gloomy waters. Shapeshifter he may be, but he hadn't apparently shifted from there in the last decade or so, not on my evidence, anyway!

The Iceman cometh...

2007-08-30T17:58:00.000Z

Not far from Galdhøpiggen, (considered to be the highest point in Norway), is a little glacier that's pretty accessible by road. I discovered when we got there that (amazingly), I'd been there once before, fifteen years previously. I have an almost identical photo sitting at home (with a red Nissan rather than a green Jeep). I'm also firmly convinced that 15 years ago, it was a whole lot bigger.

Or maybe that's just the current contemporary angst about global warming... Only time will tell.

Bjorn again

2007-08-29T23:19:00.000Z

Lake Tyin is a strange place. When the clouds come over, its God-forsaken landscape is harsh and uninviting. On the other hand, its Icelandic stillness in the sunshine is exhilarating. This is the first place I had ever climbed up to a glacier from, many years ago. Glaciers until then, for me, had been the stuff of textbooks, but sitting here and watching the elements at work that shaped this landscape over the millenia makes it anything but so. How surprising, then, that whilst soaking up this eerie atmosphere, along should stroll a young couple pushing a pram... Now, I understand that the Romans had a practice of leaving their youngsters out on the hillsides to toughen them up a bit, but Bjorn and Eda (with whom we shortly became aquainted, but that's another tale...) were just doing their normal "popping up to the glacier with the wee one" thing.... in much the same way that one encounters elderly folk on Zimmer frames, and chaps ski-ing uphill, in the heights and wilds of this place.

Home of the Learning Object Model

2007-08-28T13:48:00.000Z

LOM. I knew I had heard of it before. It must be the home of the Learning Object Model. In not quite the same way, I believe that the bicycle bell was invented in Tring...

And the animals came in two by two...

2007-08-27T22:44:00.000Z

Bergen University has an astounding natural history museum. Clearly the Victorians were not the only folk to have a passion for stuffing the fauna from far and wide and sticking them in a glass case.

Well, I initially thought that Norwegians of the late 1800s mostly cruised about with harpoons and clubbed seals, but how wrong I am. Not the case at all. Just like the UK's Victorians, (General Pitt-Rivers, for example, to name but one) whose capacity for collection clearly overwhelmed the capacity of their garden shed), they clearly had no aversion to popping across the odd continent and bagging a giraffe or two. (Well, I assume so... I didn't come across any zebra or giraffe on our Scandinavian travels, either. Perhaps they all got bagged and stuffed to extinction here, as well.)

By far the most astounding part of the museum, though, is its whale collection. There are 22 complete skeletons and 3 skulls from 18 different species. Accompanied by an incredible display of other marine inhabitants, there's something rather awesome about the scale and atmosphere of the place.

Now that's something hard to achieve on the web. You can classify and catalogue stuff like this, you can sort it and search it, hyperlink it and email it. But it's really just no subsitute for being there.

Awesomeness

How do you encapsulate awesomeness on the web? There doesn't seem to be an HTML markup tag for it. Well, someone clearly needs to work on this...

Takk...

2007-08-26T16:01:00.000Z

Troldhaugen, home of Edward Greig, here in Bergen. Well, I say home... but the guy spend a huge part of his life wandering Europe... So, the Grieg pied-a-terre might be a better description.

He died of emphysema, it seems. The cocktail of sodium bromide, and a host of other turn-of-the-century concoctions that he consumed to keep body and soul together in those last years, was impressive.

The house has some wonderful photos of him wandering the mountain sides with walking stick, greatcoat and trilby hat. No Berghaus fleece, Craghoppers, Karrimor, Nike or whatever.

Apparently he created a bit of a stir by breaking with Norwegian tradition of the time, and being (a) cremated, and (b) buried at the bottom of the garden. He's still there, in a hole in the rock, a few yards below the septic tank.

Wandering around Bergen, we find monuments to him everywhere. But nothing to beat that humble resting place.

An unmistakable landscape appears from the gloom...

2007-08-25T11:47:00.000Z

30 hours later the mists cleared to the unmistakable shores of Scandinavia. Well, Stavanger, to be precise. On my last visit here, 14 years ago, I was asked ...

Why do you come to visit this dirty old oil town?

"Dirty old oil town"? Hmm. Clealy the enquirer had never visited Ellesmere Port, never savoured the wonders of Widnes, the nuances of Newcastle, the subtleties of Southampton.

But this year we didn't loiter there. We'd done the tourist stuff of Stavanger a decade ago, and we stayed aboard the ferry northbound up the coast to Bergen. More tomorrow... watch this space...

And the Fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine...

2007-08-24T13:30:00.000Z

Well, the Tyne was actually crystal clear as we left North Shields today, bound for Norway and all things Scandinavian.

It didn't last. A mile offshore and we disappeared onto a misty emptiness...

This was to be the first step of a journey to the North Lands, the storytale stomping ground of Noggin the Nog, Thor Nogson, and Graculus... the apocryphal home of Eric Bloodaxe, the real roots of Thor Heyerdal, and just up the road, no doubt, from Abba's retirement home. Gosh... interesting sagas ahead, one hopes. Beowulf, eat your heart out...

The P is silent, as in 'swimming baths'

2007-08-17T21:16:00.000Z

Here is the zenith of my summer. I spent about £40 on gardening stuff earlier this year, what with seed trays, compost, chicken wire, bamboo canes, twine, and the like. The sun beat down and scorched them, so I watered them. The rain lashed down and ravaged them, so I pampered them, strung them up, supported them. And here they are.

So far, we must be running at about 25 pence per pea consumed. And that's discounting my labour costs. (Still, it's supposed to be a labour of love.)

I go on holiday in a few days time. The likelihood of the residue of my pea crop being there and edible when I return is slim. Bad timing, I guess.

This photo is the evidence. I'll put it on Flickr.com for posterity. Now of course I'm taking another chance there, aren't I? I know my pea plants won't be there in another month's time. I trust my pea photos will be there in another year's time. Nice of Yahoo to give us Flickr, to stash away and share these gems. I've chosen to entrust it with the custodianship of this monument to my £40-worth of peas.

But why did I put it on Flickr? There must be many other places where one can offer this sort of legacy to the vegetable-curious community... What about Wikimedia Commons, perhaps?

True. But in the case of Flickr I feel in control. Who moderates it? I do. It's my repository... and I am the gatekeeper. (Well, so long as the Gods at Flickr are OK with that)

I suppose I could have put it on Photobucket, but I didn't. The clue is in the name. Sometimes one feels judged by the company one keeps. Fotki , the same applies.

DropShots , well, it's a different business model - not about public sharing, but a closed network for friends and family. Picasa , a clever Google blend of personal and public photo submissions, but where's the gravitas ?

OK... I wanted the world to see My Peas. And I wanted them to feel like serious peas. In this case my peas are not silent, unlike the Ps in swimming baths...

Will the real [Me] please take one pace forward...

2007-05-25T15:30:00.000Z

Who is the real Me ? Well, I wrote this blog post...

Or at least, the identity that is Me in the context of this personal blog.

Oh, and I sign in as a different [Me] to write a different "subject" blog to this one.

And that's different to the Me in the context of My Work. I sign in to the system at My Work as a different [Me].

That [Me] sometimes goes to conferences and puts on different clothes and cleans its fingernails and moderates its Lancashire accent... in which case appears to be another Instance of Me. That will me (Me)2 .

Then I get home, and relax after a beer or two... and become again the instance of Me that is (Me)1 (or it is (Me)3 ? )

So, which (Me)n is/are in my e-portfolio?

And which (Me)n is in charge of my e-portfolio?

Answers, on a postcard, to... (Me)0, devnull@gmail.com

Explaining Web 2.0 - in under 5 minutes!

2007-05-24T13:08:00.000Z

Hard to do, but this excellent animation from Mike Wesch gives a very powerful overview of the concept of what the shift to Web 2.0 technologies is all about, and the capacity it enables for changing the way we work with the internet. I never thought I'd utter the word "Awesome" in this sort of context, but right now, I'm tempted!

Reality, Truth and Convenience

2007-05-23T08:10:00.000Z

A clever chap, Harry Beck. He came up with a different way of representing the London Underground on a map that was less about reality and more about convenience. He gave us the "traditional" tube map as we know it.

Is it Art? I don't pretend to know, but it's certainly a clever design.

Simon Patterson took Mr Beck's idea and made his own version of it, as "art"... clever, off-beat, and one of the 50 original prints did sell at auction for £14,950, and it did hang in the Tate Gallery for a while. But you couldn't usefully navigate London with it.

And at some point someone had a go at creating this gem, titled the "If England had lost the war" tube map. The translation looks a bit dodgy, and there's clearly an element of irreverent humour at play... but you could actually navigate with it.

Which sort of brings me to my question. If I create a taxonomy, a sort of artifical construction, a classification, that I believe will help people to find stuff that I have organised in some way, does it have to be "right"? Is is sufficient for it to be "convenient"?

If it's arrived at by some sort of consensus, and sort of works empirically, warts and all, in a given situation for a particular audience, then really it's just an instance of a folksonomy. And even if folksonomies are oftentimes dubbed "fauxonomies"... by their very nature, they are malleable, transient things that despite their rough and ready nature, do just work... most of the time.

Me, I'm quite happy to accept a trade-off between perfection and convenience. Sometimes it will mean we occasionally disembark at the wrong stop... but that's a whole new thing... Serendipity...

Touching the void...

2007-02-14T10:24:00.000Z

So, to blog or not to blog, that is the question. Is there any point to this? Is anyone actually listening? It feels like one is sitting in a sort of vast empty internet wilderness, doodling hieroglyphics in the dust.

If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there, is there a crash?

Answers on a postcard to... devnull@gmail.com

The Gap

2006-07-26T18:31:00.000Z

Today we crossed the gap into the unknown. In many ways.

We'd been to Poland several times before, and today were driving to its Eastern border with Ukraine. For us, this was the start of the unknown.

Stopped off in Lublin, to pick up a few provisions, and on the way out of town espied a huge stone edifice dominating the skyline. This chilling monument evocatively marks the site of the Majdanek concentration camp, though the grey rifts and folds of its tortured stone surface merely prepare one's emotions for the full depth and range of feelings that a visit to the preserved camp behind it soon elicits.

While only a portion of the camp still stands, the wire compounds, the storeroom of Cyclon B, the crematoria, the huts with their stockpiles of confiscated shoes, all have a chilling tale to tell.

We spent several hours there, and later moved on, into the Ukraine, mindful of the countless others sixty-something years before, who'd spent somewhat longer there, and moved on through such a different exit.

Parting of the ways

2006-07-25T17:31:00.000Z

This morning we had our first setback. It started as a somewhat surreal experience, in which we were overtaken by our trailer.

The trailer is a handsomely crafted affair, created by cutting a second Fiat Panda in half. This essentially gave us a complete spare rear-axle and rear suspension to have with us, and we filled the trailer with all the Fiat engine and front suspension spares from the cannibalised front half... Essentially, we had almost a complete spare car with us. Anyway, we were blasting quite happily along a roadworks-strewn Lower Silesian highway somewhere near Wroclaw when it happened...

Crunch! Thump! Screech!

The first strange noise was the NATO hitch jaw breaking away from the rear crossmember of the car. The roadsurface had been causing us horrendous vibration for some time, being a bit like driving over tarmacked corrugated iron for an hour or so, Finally, metal fatigue had set in, and the hitch mounting had torn away from the crossmember.

At the "Crunch" sound, I had braked, almost by reflex. At which point the car slowed and the free'd trailer's momentum took it whistling past us, dodging nimbly through a gap and over onto the newly built other carriageway, ending up ahead of us, still upright, completely unscathed.

We later discovered that the "Thump" sound was the trailer hitch smashing into the rear axle when I slowed... (an action that, incidentally, demolished the rear brake pipes,) and the "Screech" was the nice long gouge in the road surface evidencing its subsequent path of travel. Well, no amount of gaffer tape was going to rejoin the front Panda to its rear Half-Panda. We had no real choice, given time pressure, other than to abandon the trailer (suitably anonymised) in the adjacent forest, along with much of its payload. Sigh!

Fate of the most expensive grease in the known world

2006-07-24T22:49:00.000Z

We arrived late in Prague, last night. Very late. But in Prague that's never too late to find a beer... (which we did).

Better still, this morning we found some brake assembly grease. Scouring the Lonely Planet and Rough Guides produced neither vendors of autoparts nor the Czech phrase for "Where can I buy some copper brake lubricating grease", so the failsafe was to wander into the Mercedes agent, where English was no problem, and to buy the tiniest poshest tub of the most expensive brake grease in the known world. But if felt like it would be worth every last koruna.

Eager to get out of Prague and on our way, we headed east towards the mountains, intending to pass through Hradec Králové and into Poland. We climbed ever upwards through forested mountain passes, pausing only to clobber our mis-behaving brakes periodically into submission. At some point in the afternoon, after a particularly irritating seizure in a village high street, we finally pulled over into a field, brewed up, and had a go at a complete front disc-brake rebuild.

Belgium... Culinary home of the waffle

2006-07-23T22:04:00.000Z

Today is our first proper full day on the road for the Mongol Rally, and we aim to be in Prague tonight. That means foot down on the accelerator, and a long, long haul down the European Autobahns.

Now Belgium is renowned for its cuisine, and on my previous visits here I've enjoyed sampling waffles, chocolate, beers-a-plenty, and some brilliant seafood (amazing for a country with so little coastline), especially the mussels.

We have to press on, this time, though. No time for gastronomic indulgence. Just a few periodic halts in laybys to brew tea in our trusty pink kettle. Oh, and we seem to have a slight problem with the front disc brakes... Every now and again our cruising speed (about 50 mph) falls off as they start to seize on. The current temporary fix is to lie down in the road and hit them with a hammer. Seems to work. Let's get to Prague, and have a go at fixing them properly tomorrow...

Start of a long and winding road

2006-07-22T22:41:00.000Z

Strangely, Hyde Park today for us will be just the start of a long and winding road, and the culmination of weeks of inventive preparation. We're off on the 2006 Mongol Rally.

It's not a competitive rally. It's a rally in the sense of being a lot of people gathered together for a common purpose... the purpose being to drive several thousand miles from London, UK, to Ulanbataar, Mongolia... in a really crap car (anything 1,000 ccs and under)... and in doing so, raise a load of money for some charities.

We'll be raising money for Mercy Corps, and for Send-A-Cow, and we've been doing this by offering our sponsors promotional space on the side of our lovely yellow 20-year old Fiat Panda .

The shape of things to come...

1986-08-08T19:54:00.000Z

I am so looking forward to the next decade...

Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a 'home computer' could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.

...It makes me want to throw my trusty reliable Commodore Pet away.

Now I understand "real time"

1983-08-18T10:41:00.000Z

I've been tinkering on and off for the last few years with these teletypes. They've made such a difference to how I work... in essence, they've meant that I can actually interact with my programs... and get a response straight away. It used to be so frustrating running my programs overnight, then coming in to the computer centre the next morning to pick up my printout and see what the results output was. One little typo and it all had to be corrected and run again, usually over the next night... But with a teletype I can run a program and interact with it. It responds to my input. How cool is that, eh?

Joshua: Shall we play a game? David Lightman: Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War. Joshua: Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess? David Lightman: Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War. Joshua: Fine. David Lightman: What is the primary goal? Joshua: You should know, Professor. You programmed me. David Lightman: C'mon. What is the primary goal? Joshua: To win the game

And sometime this year, I expect to learn that the only winning strategy (at least in this case) is not to play the game.

Way back in the past

1976-08-20T17:09:00.000Z

Here I am in 1976, without even using the Wayback Machine, sitting by a haystack, indulging on one of my favourite pastimes...(eating!), and maybe pondering if anyone's going to invent something as incredible as the Internet...

What have I learned this year? Well, amongst other things, I am feeling particularly smug about having been able to write a program that lets me do two-way analysis of variance on a computer. It's just so much easier than doing all the calculations by hand.

Better still, I can keep the program, and even my data, on a stack of these handy little punched cards... I once made the mistake of dropping them, on a windy day in the middle of the campus. Thanks goodness for line-numbering.... it only took me a couple of hours to sort them back into order again. (You don't make that mistake twice!)