Wandering home to Ithaca

April is the Cruellest month...

2008-04-30T21:34:00.002+01:00

Or so they say. It's certainly been a little less taxing for me. So I've been able to veg out, stop and smell the roses. A little bit. Or I could, if only the rain would stop for long enough for spring to start properly. In the last three weeks I've seen snow, hail, the occasional bit of blue between the clouds, and plenty of lightning strikes.

The water meadows are full, and the people who bought new cottages on the edge of the flood plain are getting twitchier. Ah, the Great British summer is on it's way. Pack your diving suit for Wimbledon.

The end of the month is Nigh!

2008-03-28T08:40:00.002Z

So, one more day of frenetic activity to get through before a (reasonably) well-deserved blowout. I think I'm going to get some doughnuts on the way into work, to share with the lads. We all need a proper break after the last three months. The number of leaving parties I've been to in the last month isn't exactly helping my morale, so I reckon it's time to let rip, a little.

Light at the end of the tunnel

2008-03-16T16:30:00.002Z

Well, we have two weeks to go until the end of March. Work is keeping me more than occupied, but it looks as though I will be able to get something of a breather in April. My normal week week with the family after Easter has not survived the current workload, but I have received an invite to a 90th birthday party for a family friend in mid-April. This gives me all the excuse I need to take a
week away, spending as much of it as I can in Liverpool, to soak up the atmosphere and recharge my batteries.

I feel like I've been through a very intense patch over he last few months. My immune system has been down, and various minor colds and such have taken their opportunity to make hay while the sun shines. It's also been a time for some soul-searching and reflection. I seem to have let work take over my life again, for the first time in many years. I want to reclaim it and make sure it does not happen again. I feel somewhat oppressed and in a restive and rebellious mood. I need to blow off some steam. It's going to happen soon. When it does, there may be some repercussions.

Culture belongs to everyone

2008-02-24T12:34:00.009Z

This is a big year for culture, not least in my home city of Liverpool, where the events of the European Capital of Culture are in progress, with apologies to the good citizens of Trondheim, which is also sharing that distinction this year. Having said that, this week, Everton, my own club, beat the Norwegian Champions, SK Brann, 6-1 in a UEFA Cup game at Goodison Park, with an aggregate score of 8-1 over two games, so we have more than usual to apologise to my Norwegian friends for.

So, what, I ask myself, is my own contribution to culture, aside from filling my house with books and clogging up Flickr with pictures of cultural tourist sites that look just like everyone else's pictures of cultural tourist sites? Am I piling my own mediocrity on top of everyone else's? Do I pull my weight in the world of culture?

So yesterday, I made a small, yet symbolic contribution. Rather than stand in a long queue for the ticket booth and turnstile at Stonehenge, I stumped up £40 to join English Heritage, for a year, and get in by the member's gate. My folks have been members of the National Trust for many years now. This gives them the ability to turn up at stately homes up and down the country, wave their membership cards to get in, and not have to stump up any additional money. Seeing as cultural tourism is one of their major pastimes, and keeps them occupied and off the streets, it works out very well for them. They have a long list of places they want to go to and see, and the time to get out and do it.

However, for me, this represents a crossing of the Rubicon. Although I spend quite a bit of my limited spare time visiting interesting sites, actually stumping up for membership of these organisations has always struck me as something very worthy that middle-class people of a certain age do as part of a social obligation. So, it's not the principle of the thing that worries me specifically. It's something associated, in my own mind at least, with old farts. So, signing up on the dotted line for English Heritage membership is one of the oldiest, fartiest things I have yet decided to do.

It may be a sign that I have weathered my latest(!) mid-life crisis, acquired sufficient big boy's toys to convince myself that it's not necessarily downhill all the way from here, then allowed myself to become even more of a part of the establishment. It may also be that I was feeling a little snap-happy and wanted to get shots of the stones before the busloads of tourists waiting patiently at the turnstiles could clog my viewfinder. So, was the £40 a spontaneous act of queue-jumping? Maybe.

So I took my various camera bodies and lenses around the Stonehenge site, which, due to erosion, is festooned with lines, tapes and fences to keep the site from being damaged further. There is a full-time security presence, presumably to stop the locals from setting up Wicker men to barbeque the assembled hordes of tourists. Or dancing starkers around the stones, or selling them dodgy kebabs, or whatever. Anyway, this means that you have a limited degree of access. The nearest point the path goes is about 10-12 metres from the stones themselves. The central set of stones themselves are reasonably compact. Maybe not as small as the versions seen in the stage show by Spinal Tap, but getting there. The site sits in the middle of a wider Neolithic landscape, with various burial mounds and tumuli dotting the area, all the way to the horizon. So, picking a long lens out of my bag meant I could go further away and still fill the frame. So much for Stonehenge, aside from the excellent large chocolate cookies on sale there.

I went off to one of my favourite chilling-out zones: Avebury. This is about 17 miles further north, and is somewhat larger and older site. It is also much more complex, with long avenues, banks and ditches, and a large conical man-made mound at Silbury Hill. Bizarrely enough, it also has a small, traditional and slightly quirky English rural village smack bang in the middle of it. Having my new English Heritage membership card saved me £2 at the car park, and I wandered into the village, snapping merrily as I went.

I hesitate somewhat to publicise Avebury, as it is subject to the same erosive pressures on the chalk of the ditch and bank as Stonehenge does. Yet whereas Stonehenge needed a long lens to reach the stones, at Avebury, it is possible to walk around, touch, and see out from within. In one stone it is even possible to sit down, as a cleft has been worn into one side. Some years ago, I found a poem, enclosed in a Zip-Loc bag, sticking from a small crack in this particular stone. What's more, there was no security presence, no turnstiles, but a welcoming museum and tea-shop in a timber-framed barn. Wonder of wonders, there is also a pub, right in the centre of the Henge.

Herein lies a quandary. Avebury is an open secret. It's miles better than Stonehenge to see. It's bigger. better and has draught real ale. Here yokels, bikers, hippies, wiccans co-exist and wonder at the place. In spring and summer, sheep are grazed within the henge. It's open to anyone, and everyone who visits loves it. I dare say that, if the locals decided to set up Wicker men, or dance starkers around the stones on a warm summer's night, no-one would bat an eyelid. As for anyone planning to dance starkers ("I believe the phrase is 'sky-clad' M'lud") around the stones at this time of year, good luck to you, it's been a cold week, and you'll need to sit down at the pub afterwards for a good dollop of mulled wine or hot cocoa. And to be honest, it's the kind of place where the local witches and the Women's Institute will probably collaborate to organise it, if they're not already synonymous.

So, culture for everyone, but maybe not for coach parties. The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society.

The joy of eBay

2008-02-11T19:06:00.000Z

Lately, I've been finding that my photography is a decent pressure relief at weekends. I'm spending my spare time travelling out to local sites of interest, equipped with a camera and a few lenses, to experiment with different approaches to landscapes and architecture.

Now we are in the last few weeks of winter before spring pops up. The sun is still low in the afternoon sky, and the sky is crisp, cold and blue. I'm enjoying composing images with light, aperture, shutter and a very sparing use of Photoshop, as shown above. I've also been asked by a friend to photograph his wedding this coming August. So there seems to be a useful outlet to give me something to distract from work.

So, I thought, if I'm going to be doing this kind of thing more often, should I at least do it properly? I have photographed a number of weddings over the last two years, for friends and family, from whom I would not accept any form of payment. But, if people are starting to come to me on the basis of word of mouth, what do I do? I'm not a professional, offering the full service at £2000 a go. I don't have time to run a business. I take photographs because I enjoy it, and because I enjoy giving my friends and family a full set of formal and informal pictures without them having to worry about the costs, which are exorbitant for weddings these days.

But, I thought, I need to be properly equipped for the kind of photographs that they want. That means a better wide-angle lens, more suitable for low light than the zoom lens (not bad) that I bought with my new Nikon D50 2 years ago. So down this road I went, buying an excellent wide angle lens, the results of which are shown above.

A friend and colleague suggested I might invest in a second-hand wet film camera body, just for those special occasions. His own work is far better than mine, so I thought, why not? When I was a kid, I always looked up to the serious photographers and photojournalists who used the Nikon FM2, a rugged, simple, fully manual design with a shutter speed designed for taking action shots. So I went for it. So where did this quest take me: eBay. Now, apparently, the great bazaar and forum of second-hand cameras and kit. Stuff that used to fill the shelves of photographer's shops up and down the land is now traded electronically, while the local shops themselves are in decline.

So, off I went to set up my account, identify what the going rate was for the camera I was after, and start bidding. Easy, peasy, I thought, set up a reasonable bid, and wait to see what happened. Twice, I was within ten-twenty seconds of landing what I was after, only to get two successive emails telling me that I had been outbid, and that the item had now been sold. Eventually, at the fourth opportunity, I made a bid and left it to run it's course while I went to my Wednesday night yoga class. On getting home, I found I was the proud owner of a second-hand FM2 body. So far, so good. But herein lies a quandary.

New Nikon lenses are made for their autofocus cameras. My fixed-focal length lenses are of an older design interchangeable between my modern digital SLR and the FM2. My newer lenses are not. They have no capability to change the aperture setting manually. This is done entirely by the camera. They also have very sensitive manual focus rings, and are designed for almost entirely auto-focus, auto-exposure operation.

So, back to eBay, to get a backward-compatible replacement for my longer focal-length zoom lens. The older lens is now out of production, as newer versions have motors to reduce vibration. The glass is still very good, and the lenses are spectacularly capable. They're in high demand, and the last-second bidding even more savage. But I got one. Now for the fun of selling my
previous kit lens, unless anyone reading here can offer it a good home.

So January ends, not with a bang, but with a sneeze...

2008-01-30T19:48:00.000Z

January, named for Ianus, the Roman god of entrances and exits, one of the most common of the lares et penates seen in the entry to every Roman dwelling, with two faces, one looking forward, the other back. Also the etymological source for Janitor... hence looking more like Groundskeeper Willie, in the modern iconography.

So, looking backward, not to last year, but to this month. It's been intense, tiring, emotionally demanding, occasionally pretty gruesome from a health standpoint, but it's nearly over. It's been my worst month for a very long time. Bizarrely enough, it's also been one of my most successful, from a professional standpoint. I'm very ambivalent about having a higher professional profile though, because I believe it will adversely effect my work-life balance, which is something I have to take seriously from a health standpoint.

It's been nearly thirteen years since my last big breakdown, and nine years since I managed to finally say goodbye to antidepressants. yet the fear persists. I still lost my late twenties and early thirties. The time when people are getting together, settling down and deciding whether they want to make babies or not.

My priorities were different at that age. I was never suicidal, but I spent many days and nights wrestling with my demons, frequently on the edge of, or sometimes right down in, the pit. At the time, I was still functioning professionally, and my managers looked at me and occasionally gave me bonuses for jobs completed because they knew I would do it, come hell or high water. The extra money wasn't worth the grief, and occasionally felt like an insult. To be fair, though, when I came out of it, some of my managers gave me an enormous amount of slack when it was needed.

So now, I'm standing on the threshold, with one face pointing in each direction. I have a choice. Do I throw myself into work as intensely as I did in my twenties, knowing that I have the opportunity to make a big name for myself in all the right places, or do I sit on my professional laurels and try to recherche some of my temps perdu? I have a vague feeling that it's all too late for me, either way. All Madeleines gratefully accepted, btw.

In the meantime, I seem to be looking at the end of the cold that's given me some uncomfortable mornings. I have a new wide-angle lens for my camera, and yet another friend has asked me to do their wedding photographs. The forward-looking face of Ianus sees some intriguing possibilities, yet in my heart, I know my past will continue to haunt me.

Seasonal afflictions

2008-01-22T23:01:00.000Z

So, as semi-predicted, my depressive mood eased with the recovery from jetlag. However, it didn't help my immune system to shrug off the bug that was working its way up and down the office over Christmas and the New Year. It's a cold. Not Man Flu (or Bloke Flu, for that matter). Given that it happened when I couldn't afford the time, it's made me angry enough to work through it.

The downside is that it's taking a while to get shut of, my colleagues are wondering which of them I'll pass it on to and I'm gradually losing patience with my own body. I dare say I can still compel it by sheer force of will, but it doesn't always want to respond. In the meantime, the blog remains a useful outlet when I'm stuck in the house with only my computer and a box of cold remedies for company.

When this is out of my system, I'm going to need a proper blowout.

An encounter with the pit

2008-01-15T00:12:00.000Z

I thought this was all over a long time ago. A long, hard week away, followed by eight time zones change seems to have made me vulnerable. Last week's intense adrenalin surge is now being followed by a crash. After a (short) weekend of disturbed sleep patterns punctuated by moments of activity at peculiar hours, I had my first day back in the office today. More information overload and obligations to my team. My diary full of new commitments made for me by others in advance, on top of those I have already made on my own.

When I pick up my necessary groceries and head back to my house, it takes me only a few minutes to check my emails and then crash onto my bed without eating an evening meal, picking up the newspaper, or turning on the television. It's a peculiar state, not awake, not asleep, paralysed in inactivity without the self-motivation even to roll over. I've been here before, but not for a long time, and I'm scared of what it means. The pit beckons at the edge of my imagination. Please, God, not again.

No calls, no messages, alone on a dark winter's evening. I know I'm vulnerable. I've been here before. As usual, I'm trying to live up to everyone's expectations of me. I'm not superhuman, but I am, at this moment, very, very, alone. I thought depression was something I had beaten a long time ago. Now I'm not so sure and I'm writing this frantically like a message in a bottle, having stirred myself into action.

Maybe, in a couple of days, when the fatigue of jetlag has passed, I'll be more positive. I'm in great demand, professionally at least, and my friends will rally round if and when they know about my mental state. In the meantime, the abyss is having another look at me.

Intense

2008-01-12T14:37:00.000Z

Back home, after a very intensive week of networking, learning, making plans and enlarging my large, cloven , carbon hoofprints. I'm dehydrated, jetlagged and reeling from mental overload. I have too many thoughts running through my mind, and not enough time to process them all. I've unpacked, but now it's time to shower and crash.

My lasting impression of Los Angeles: The thick brown-tinted layer of haze that sits over the city from the mountains all the way down to the seashore. I've never seen anything quite like it, and descending through it from above seemed like jumping into a muddy pool.

A New Year, just like the Old Year

2008-01-04T14:18:00.000Z

I came back from my folk's yesterday afternoon, after not quite two weeks of unwinding and getting to relax. The only significant mental effort required was that needed to take on board advice on my golf swing (better control of the position and grip of the handle) and make sure the beer stocks were consumed before their marked sell-by date. Aside from that, it is always great to be back in the bosom of the family, mother's cooking and all. It's a wrench to come back to an empty house and the certainty of ongoing frenetic workload.

It could be worse. On Monday, my cousin was very quiet. He's now somewhere on his way back to Afghanistan. His mother was quite vociferous about her worries. He's had a new tour of duty hanging over him throughout the break. He's been in the service for a long time now, and spent time in all kinds of potentially dangerous places over the last decade or more. He's not that much younger than me, and I find myself thinking that he's done enough for a man his age. I'm not sure how much time he has left, or whether he might be tempted to extend. I think his wife, stepdaughter and sisters might look him long and hard in the eye before he does.

This morning, I made the mistake of popping into the office, my last day of leave, to check my emails and post before catching a flight to the US tomorrow. Emails aplenty, more mail than I could reasonably digest in a morning, and a cluster of managerial issues and temporary mini-crises seeking help and guidance, besides which, there were any number of people off sick with a variety of seasonal afflictions.

Amidst all the confusion of a day in the office, I pleaded invisibility (I'm not really here y'know) and got on with trying to sort out those things which were necessary and urgent before travelling from those which could wait and those which were still going to be just as much a pain when I had more time to deal with them. So I'm trying to keep focussed on the next week, which should be fairly time-consuming and intensive, aside from trying to keep my circulation going on long-haul to the west coast, and staying awake at LAX long enough to ensure that I get through the usual chaos of customs and immigration with enough time to get to my onward flight.

The annual AIAA bash at Reno (or Aerospace Sciences Meeting) is very much of a goldfish bowl. There's precious little to do except absorb enormous amounts of information and work the policy and funding bazaars until you drop. Many people never see the outside of the conference venue. The mountains are nice, but Reno is there primarily for gambling and the more dubious recreations that take place on the edge of town. This is the last year there; they have twigged that engineers and scientists have a more realistic appraisal of the probability of winning in a casino than the usual crowd.

The usual crop of familiar long-serving greybeards from industry are there, and we buy our friends beers and keep close tabs on our rivals. Information is the currency in which we trade, and codes of honour are maintained by submitting ourselves for scrutiny and evaluation by our peers.

The egos and reputations of senior academics are boosted by getting hard work out of their younger postdocs. The PhD students and postdoctoral researchers are the bright-eyed newbies in this environment. These are the people who are trying to find their own place as individuals, rather than as someone's sidekick or bag carrier. It's very competitive, and the price of failure is obscurity. They have to publish or perish, and if the quality is not good enough, for whatever reason, their credibility suffers. It's emotionally and psychologically brutal. Too frequently, the quality can be poor, and career-limiting for the junior staff involved. Reputations are there to be made, and broken.

A curiously subdued day

2007-12-26T12:12:00.000Z

So, Christmas day over with again for another year, and a fairly easy and laid-back one. No great dramas or traumas. The TV stayed switched off all day. Subdued bonhomie all around. Nowhere to travel, except walking to the pub for a couple of beers before Christmas dinner. My sister organises the annual distribution of meals to the housebound by the local churches. There were a few undelivered, because circumstances change at this time of the year. Some had been taken to stay with their families, and a few, unfortunately, had died between the setting up of the list and the day itself. An occupational hazard for the elderly and housebound at this time of year.

My day was curiously subdued. My sister's stepkids were with their mother, so they didn't have me to use as a life-size cuddly toy and self-propelled bouncy castle. That happens in a day or so. I read a couple of the books my mother had bought me. I received a surprising number of golf-related presents, despite not being able to get out for a game in several months. Later today I'll be out on the driving range to get the cobwebs out of my swing.

Something seems to be missing from my picture, and I think I know what, but I'm not telling.

Seasonal thoughts

2007-12-21T22:03:00.000Z

It's cold, and it's going to get colder still over the next few days. Ice on the roads and on the outside of my windows, people wondering if there will be snow falls before Tuesday morning. It's certainly cold enough, but the skies are clear, and my friend Lorenzo will be rubbing his hands in glee and looking for somewhere he can set up his telescope to take advantage of good stargazing weather. I've turned my heating on continuous to make sure I sleep soundly and don't have to worry about getting cold during the night. I'm snug as a bug in a rug. But only for the next day or so.

Christmas is about family above everything else, and mine are a good four hours drive away, up crowded icy motorways. I have to fill a car with presents, pack my rucksack (and a few golf clubs) wrap myself up warm and join the annual migration north of all those who moved here to seek work in the south, for their multiple different reasons.

My mother wants me north as soon as possible, because I'm the one who lives on my own, far away, and she doesn't see enough of me as it is. My dad is happy to let me take my time, because he wants me to be safe driving in the adverse weather. My brother is off to his wife's family, and will catch me when he can. My sister and her husband don't have the kids for Christmas day this year, but they will see them a day or so later.

I have a few loose ends to ties up. The last lot of cards to deliver by hand, to close friends. Then my warm little house will be empty for nearly three weeks, two weeks with family, followed by a week away in the US, with work. When I come home it will be a colder, darker, emptier place than the family home, where I will be surrounded by parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and old family friends who want to know about everything I have been doing for the last year. I try to ration them to three questions each, to keep the interrogations under control.

Two weeks with the family makes me realise what I miss by living alone, with only my work and a few friends for stimulation. Once upon a time, when I was younger, this Faustian pact seemed like a good idea. Now I'm not so sure. I gave up a lot in terms of social support when I came to work in the south. This year I have felt closer to the people I have met here, but it's still not the same. I have now spent twenty years living away from my immediate family, and now I wish for a family of my own. Time to grow up.

The nettle grasped...

2007-12-16T21:24:00.000Z

A big weekend, starting with welcoming back friends on a break from their posting abroad, then a non-stop shopping session on Saturday to cover the family and godchildren, with only a couple of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and a large hot chocolate with cream to sustain me through the massed throngs on Guildford High Street.

Buying presents for kiddies is the best bit; going into the toy shops and trying to pick out the things most appropriate for the age, personality and educational needs of each child. With the added fun factor of getting to try out the demonstration versions first. It's even more fun to watch them being opened. The look of wonder on the face of a small child with a new toy is a joy to behold. We should find more excuses to do it, or even none at all. Giving joy should not specifically have conditions or a fixed timescale attached.

I have noticed more and more toys for adults, or rather grown-ups, because adult toys are an entirely different matter and probably inappropriate for this blog. Having thought about it, "grown-ups" is also a misnomer, as if we look forward to getting gadgets and gizmos for presents, then we're just overgrown kids ourselves. I'm trying to think of an appropriate label with which to taxonomise those of us who still like to play with toys once we are well into our mortgage-paying and pension-scheme-watching years. All suggestions welcome. My sister will love the one I bought for her, although her husband and the kids will want to have a go as well.

I noticed that one of this year's fashionable presents is a miniature radio-controlled helicopter with twin coaxial rotors. My parents bought me one a few months ago for my 40th birthday, and, to my shame, I haven't even taken it out of the box yet, I've been too busy to get outdoors with it. The potential for flying one indoors hasn't escaped me though, and I'm tempted to take it for a trial run in a big open plan office at work (cackles evilly!).

So, I'm down to the last few little bits and pieces to get. Panto on Wednesday. Office party on Friday, on the road up north for two weeks visiting family from next Saturday. I still have to write and post my Christmas cards, but I'm feeling a great deal of relief that things are finally falling into place.

Philosophy in practice

2007-12-15T08:57:00.000Z

From my good friends Bruce at the department of philosophy, University of Adelaide

or even an annotated version

so now you know...

In memoriam

2007-12-15T01:05:00.000Z

This morning, I got into work after a hectic week of traveling to face some very bad news. The most impressive man I met in my days as a teenage prodigy died last week, in circumstances which can only be described as painful.

He was a mentor, a grandfather figure, an acerbic wit, and thinking back, for a man with an immense, long-standing global reputation in his field, why, in the name of everything that is holy, did he spend so much time with me, as a 19-year old, trying to teach me the subtleties of things that I am still trying to fathom out.

In his retirement, he suffered a serious stroke, which paralysed the left side of his body for a while, and from which he progressively recovered. He became a lecturer in Nietzchean philosophy to those of advanced years. I challenged him on the choice of Friederich Nietzche, because of the pain and suffering that his view of the world had caused. Why not someone like Spinoza, equally disconcerting to someone of a literalist bent, but much more humane. He was of the view that Nietzche was much maligned, particularly because his sister took to editing his works posthumously.

Posthumous. A difficult word of which to face the implications. Damn it Jeremy. I'm going to miss our little talks. Requiescat in pacem

Grasping the nettle

2007-12-13T21:14:00.000Z

Well, after three weeks of non-stop travel and two weekends to crash, I'm looking at the last weekend that I'll have available to do my Christmas shopping. No cards written, let alone posted yet. Too many air miles on the clock and not enough time to get it all in. Next week is less hectic, but I have more business travel to sort out before I finally give in and stop for my family time over Christmas and the New Year.

Surprisingly enough, looking back I realise how much business travelling I've done, and how little time I've had to stop and smell the roses. Even on holiday, the pace never slacked. 3000 miles driving in three weeks. I need to stop, I need a break. But it's going to be busy from the start of January until at least the end of March. I like travel, and new experiences, but I'm not the wunderkind I used to be, and the demands on my time are starting to be too much.

Tomorrow is a suit-wearing day...

2007-12-10T22:25:00.000Z

And there have been too many of those lately. It means I have to wash and iron shirts, which takes up time that I'd rather spend doing other things, like reading, thinking and collecting my thoughts together to write down here. Besides, some people think I look somewhat intimidating in a suit. I certainly don't feel comfortable in one. I don't wear them that frequently, so when I do it gets noticed, in the way that my aunts tell me that I look better with my hair cut, and some women tell me I look more impressive (is that a status judgement?).

I tend to buy new suits for specific rites of passage, predominantly the three main ones: hatchings, matchings and despatchings. The third of these is the most important of all, because you want to convey your respects to those who you might not have had a chance to say goodbye to since you last spoke. A suit, for me, therefore carries baggage, emotional and psychological. It also takes away some of my individuality, and forces me to conform to the expectations of society, like a child being made to wear a school uniform. I have no difficulty doing this for the major events of life, particularly for my nearest and dearest, but wearing a suit is not something I do lightly. He who forces me to iron shirts must have a pretty good reason for doing so.

On the road again

2007-12-10T19:11:00.000Z

An early start, in the dark, coming home to a dark house. Yup, it's December and the days are getting to their shortest. Only the regular pattern of the radio programmes on the car stereo to let you synchronise your body clock while driving. No wonder the dates of the old pagan festivals were taken over to provide a meaningful pattern to the year. If it's a dark December in Northern Europe, you need a damn good party to keep your spirits up at this time of year.

The archaeologists tell us that the megalithic tombs at Maes Howe in the Orkneys and Newgrange in County Meath were designed precisely to capture the rays of the sunrise at the winter solstice, and convey them to the darkest depths of their ancestral tombs. Maybe the principle was the same as the alarm clock that roused me abruptly from my slumbers this morning, because the sun certainly wasn't going to do that job. Was the intent of the megalith builders to wake the dead, to let them know of another year past, or just to let the living know it was time to celebrate and get a few beers down their neck because the days were going to get longer from here on in.

Did the megalithic passage tombs come with a snooze button? Probably not, but if you're living in the neolithic, you probably don't have an enormous amount of leisure time. There are fires to be lit, crops to tend (if you've discovered agriculture by this point), large furry animals to be trapped, skinned and eaten and big lumps of rock to carve into shape and stick around the landscape to impress the neighbours. Even if your flint-knapping skills are up to scratch, and you have a regular local supply of megafauna to barbeque with the family, this takes up most of your spare time. Go on, have a party, you deserve a break.

A lazy Sunday afternoon

2007-12-09T15:07:00.000Z

The number of shopping days to Christmas is quickly ticking down, with two more weekends to go, but being December, the nights are closing in towards the solstice and it's dark and cold outside in this part of the planet. So, why go out and face the elements, when you can sit in front of your screen and be bombarded by online advertising from everyone you've ever bought stuff from in the past.

The Sunday supplements are full of glossy leaflets, encouraging conspicuous consumption, and they still manage to keep coming, even when you shake the newspaper over a wastepaper basket to get rid of the looser ones. To quote the great Tom Lehrer :

"Christmas time is here, by golly,
disapproval would be folly,
deck the halls with hunks of holly,
brother, here we go again"

So, toy-shopping for God-children aside, much of what I need to get for friends and family is available from the comfort of my desk at home, with a big mug of warm chocolate sitting next to me. All the major physical effort is left to the postmen who have to deliver all this stuff to my front door, rather than being stuffed down chimneys by a fictitious, bowdlerized version of a pagan Nordic demigod, dressed up for modern audiences by the Coca-Cola company.

Does this make me feel slightly guilty? Well, yes, actually. If it's the thought that counts, my first thought is that I really don't want to go out in the cold, irrespective of whether what I really want to get for my nearest and dearest is easily available online. Having said that, most things make me feel guilty, including drinking mugs of warm cocoa, when I could be out saving the planet from global warming, helping little old ladies to cross the road (particularly if they actually want to do so) or campaigning for world peace and harmony. I even might want to contemplate getting my garden into some semblance of tidiness, but that might be a step too far.

So, it's a lazy Sunday afternoon for me, keeping myself snug at home, and feeling a little touch of ennui. I can't help but feel that King Wenceslas was a far better man than I, and that technology is turning me into a cosy little couch potato. So should I feel guilty?

Mmmmm, beeeerrrr

2007-12-09T01:14:00.000Z

Alcohol, a social lubricant. Work is the curse of the drinking classes. Yup. Burp. sorry ;-)

So, back from the pub, having bumped into a variety of old friends with whom I imbibed a few pints. I found this a nice relaxing experience.

One of the people I met was a lady who I knew reasonably well in the days when I suffered badly from depression. We knew each other socially then, and she was fundamentally embarrassed to find me in the same therapy/recovery group after we had both been through breakdowns. She was keen to avoid any knowledge of her condition getting out. So I have never told anyone, although when we have met in subsequent years we ask each other elliptically how the other is doing. She is now married to a very nice guy, with whom she is very much in love, but she's still waaayyyy too thin for my comfort. Is this me being massively overprotective again, letting my inner Mommy loose (I have a strong anima)?

I enjoy (I hope) and take enormously importantly the trust of my female friends. Being a mensch is one of the things I care about. Does it make me less of a man?

Open for business

2007-12-08T20:15:00.000Z

So, the new place is beginning to look reasonably tidy, although there are a few boxes of stuff round the back which might need to be unpacked and put out for display at some point.

The state of the world today: Confused as ever. The government of Iran has sent an official letter to the US to criticise them for spying on their nuclear programme, just as the aforementioned US intelligence community has published the conclusion that Iran isn't chasing the bomb all that hard at the moment. You think they might have sent them a thank you note instead. It's only polite. Just goes to prove that you can't please anybody these days.

2007-12-08T16:53:00.000Z

So, the basics are all in place. Good.

Now, what on earth is it that drives someone to place their thoughts in a public venue, to be shot at by their fellow, men, women and other sentient beings? Is it a form of narcissicism? Maybe. Exhibitionism? Well, there's plenty of that about on the blogosphere, but not necessarily here. The disconnectedness of modern life? Possibly. Michel Houellebecq would make a great, but possibly highly opinionated and certainly controversial blogger.

Some blogs are about the great political issues and challenges of the era. They have a purpose, like a soapbox in the Speaker's Corner of Hyde Park. Does this blog have a political purpose? Well maybe, but only in the sense that every thinking person has opinions, whether they express them openly or not. I have great respect for those who use the blogosphere to air publicly what they might not otherwise be able to express without personal risk or disapprobation, like my friend Jewaira, who manages to combine humour, literature and serious comment on her collective pages. I may express political opinions, but only in passing.

Some blogs are predominantly about titillation. I have no problems with that. They probably get more hits than most, which just goes to prove that there's an enormous demand for it and that to deny it is an unhealthy form of hypocrisy. Each to their own, as long as no-one is harmed in the process, as the old Hollywood caveat about small furry animals goes. You won't find much to titillate here, for which I apologise to those on the look out for something salacious.

So, why? Predominantly so I can give my friends and acquaintances somewhere they can have a go at me. Or where I can immortalize my thoughts in HTML (chunks of Portland Stone being expensive and unwieldy for this particular application).

So, you ask (both of you), is this going to be Pooterish posturing? Maybe too early to tell.

2007-12-08T16:05:00.000Z

So far, so good. I've managed to get some piccies up, but not necessarily the ones I wanted.

So, for future reference: http://www.flickr.com/people/stephen_dedalus

So, here we go

2007-12-08T15:04:00.000Z

I've been drawn into the habit of reading and commenting on other's blogs. Now I think it's only fair to let people get back at me. Quid pro quo. Sauce for the goose. After all, it's only fair. Please bear with me, because I'm a newbie, and all the bells and whistles might not work. I do believe in courtesy, tolerance and the politeness that my grandmothers expected from me.

So, who am I? Indeed what am I? I'm a befuddled, slightly world worn and weary man who's been through umpteen mid-life crises since my teens and yet managed (I hope) to preserve my ideals, ethos and sense of humour. Humour is important to me. It's part of what makes us all human. And apologies to all the non-humans out there on the blogosphere who are now worried that I think they might not have their own equally well-developed sense of the absurd.

I'm also lucky. I have good friends, wonderful family and a whole host of creature comforts. Many, most do not. I have a soft, liberal, soul with an overactive Catholic conscience. I believe the state of the world deserves serious consideration. I believe in human frailty, and I like a pint.