West Country Gothic

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

As the weather was fine, Poi decided to walk home from work last night. I said that I’d meet her, but she said that it was quite safe at 9.30 as there people were always about and that she would be accompanied by a friend. Ours is a peaceful town, especially during the week, and the walk would take less than 10 minutes. I was not especially worried.

Having just finished work myself, I was sitting in the kitchen when she burst into the house, looking white, breathless and absolutely terrified. “I am being haunted”, she gasped as she locked and bolted the front door but was too scared to say more. Thinking she might have been stalked by some lout, I interrogated her and she told me that she had been passing NatWest, glanced in and saw a malevolent old man looking out at her. The bank was deserted and he was sitting perfectly still in the gloom. He face was grey and unhealthy looking and his legs were crossed. She took all this in at a glance before fleeing as fast as her legs could carry her.

Poi wouldn’t be convinced that her vision must have been a trick of the shadows so, deciding that the only way to allay her fears was to find out exactly what had triggered them, I said that I’d go and investigate. Poi said that there was no way that she would be left on her own and accompanied me, insisting that we took the car in case we had to make a quick getaway. I don’t believe in ghosts myself, but suspected that were they to exist, an elderly Nissan would be little defence against the forces of Hell. However, my wife is Thai and, thus, exceedingly well versed in matters supernatural. She should know best.

We got to the bank, and in a split second my scepticism was confounded as there facing me was the sinister old man exactly as Poi had described. Not only that, but he had a companion. Sitting to his left was an evil looking old woman, her gaze fixed on mine, a quizzical half-smile on her lips and a gnarled stick grasped in her aged hand. There was indeed something distinctly unnatural about the pair: they looked almost too wizened to be alive.

At this point, taking the car seemed not such a bad idea after all. I now understood what it meant to feel one’s flesh creep. With foot poised over the accelerator, I steeled myself and took a second glace at the strangely motionless pair. Despite the crepuscular lighting, it was then that I noticed a sign next to the couple saying “Please don’t touch”. They were in fact papier-mâché sculptures of an elderly vicar and his wife made by the artist Peter Rush. They may have been intended as humorous but in the gloom bore a distinct resemblance to Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Feeling none too proud of myself, I returned home with my somewhat chastened wife.

On Nearing 50 - An Emergency Checklist

I’ve been so busy recently that I completely forgot an impending date. In February I shall turn 50. That’s old, hideously old. I’ve been reviewing my lifestyle (if that’s the right word for it) and have decided that I’m far too immature to reach such an august and respectable age. In fact, I am not at all respectable. Things have got to change fast. Here is my hurriedly written list:

• Desist from playing hopscotch with pretty secretaries outside the offices of clients. Pretending to be a trapeze artist on the walls of clients’ car parks is also to be eschewed.
• Throw away all my clothes and buy several tweed suits and sensible brogues. I might also need ‘long johns’ and trusses (I am not entirely sure what these are so I’ll check with some genuinely old people like my friends David & Mike)
• Wear a tie at all times and replace sarong with night shirt or pyjamas.
• Cultivate a grave demeanour, exude gravitas and stick to ½ a pint of bitter at pub. Getting half cut, falling on the floor and laughing hysterically are definitely off the agenda.
• No more gadgets and especially no more robots (sadly this includes voice activated battle daleks). Instead spend money on pollyfilla, raw plugs and chamois leathers.
  
• Start talking about sensible things. Subjects to include the M25 corridor, power tools and grouting tiles. Also the price of various lengths of woods (2x4 or something) and the relative merits of different makes of workbench. (NB Find out what one actually does with a workbench).
  
• Refrain from conversational topics like cannibalism, cargo cults and sexual deviancy especially on first meeting people. Bear in mind that not everyone finds medieval torture techniques that amusing.
  
• Stop going to Amsterdam. Walking tours of the Lake District now on the cards.
• Take up a mature hobby like fishing or car washing.

On the whole I don't think I'll bother becoming 50. Instead I shall study taxidermy and flee to the jungles of Sarawak.

The Quantum Beach Ball

Take a gander at this BBC news article: Future directions in computing . Then ask yourself, why now and what does it all mean? And what's with all the dry ice and what is the greenish ball with its misty nimbus all about?

Keep your eye on the main picture of that football. It is highly significant. I also like the image of it in the top right of the story. At first it reminded me somewhat of The Creature from the Black Lagoon or that dreadfully creepy bit in The Mummy where the monster wades out of a moonlit marsh but now it brings to mind the scene in Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen emerges from the swamp to confront Kurtz.

Is the ball – or rather the picture of the ball - some kind of visual trope? An example of metonymy, say? Is it a graphical representation of a concept associated with another? I think not – the mistiness that envelopes the ball is all pervasive. With metonymy as with metaphor and synecdoche, a degree of precision is required. "Keels ploughed the deep", to take a classic example of all three tropes.

Something here is possibly being reified. But it is reification not so much for the sake of the signified but for that of the signifier. OK, maybe the signified is just about definable – the uncanniness of quantum physics or, more generally, the perceived spookiness of hard science. A misty image standing for a vague concept. But ultimately the medium – or rather the beach ball – is the message, to paraphrase the ever tedious Marshall McLuhan.

One can construct a simpler, more pleasing narrative. Someone at the Beeb had this really, really cool green beach ball in the news studio and needed something to justify taking some dramatic pictures of it. One might almost imagine they had been nibbling dodgy mushrooms or smoking some illicit substance and were gazing at the beach ball in stunned, slightly befuddled wonderment – the way one does. It was just so green and blurry; so green and ... well awesome. Then the idea slowly dawned: a quantum computer! The story could have been just as well have been about nanobots, or genetic engineering or even about the future of technology itself.

Keep watching. The football is bound to get more coverage.

Subversive Thais

On the face of it, much of Bangkok represents the apotheosis of capitalism. Its vast air conditioned malls boast designer shops with names like Prada, Mont Blanc and Bally. American chains are everywhere. The hotels are world class - the Marriott, Hilton and Sheraton compete with the famous Oriental Hotel.

The only fly in the capitalist ointment is the Thai sense of the absurd. For example, Japanese companies based in Bangkok had to give up on the daily singing of their corporate songs because their Thai employees just couldn't keep straight faces.

This morning I was in a large branch of Starbucks in the centre of the city and was given a book for collecting vouchers. I asked the smartly uniformed and extremely pretty senior manageress what it was for and she told me that if I collected 20 vouchers I'd get a special Starbucks planner.

"Yes," she continued adopting a highly portentous tone and pointing dramatically at the trashy thing "one day this could be yours". At this point she was so overcome with a fit of giggles that she had to sit down.

Men in Uniform

Alone in a passage at the vast Bayon complex in Cambodia looking hard at some details on the bas reliefs when a hard-looking Khmer wearing combat fatigues and a police cap strode up to me and presented his badge.

I went into major panic mode thinking that he might be after a bribe in return for not falsely arresting me for damage to the temple - a very serious offence. Knowing the etiqutte in these things, I forced a smile but was damned if I was going to salve his conscience by listening to some hard luck story - he could then maintain the fiction that he was merely presenting with the opportunity to improve my Karma. I went straight to the point and asked "how much?"

I was a bit surprised by the response "$7.50". The amount seemed too small and too exact. I was even more surprised when he opened a sack with a load of police badges. It turns out he wasn't a policeman at all, just a seller of tourist junk.

Yesterday, I was looking at cigars in the duty free (dufry) shop at Siam Reap airport when a hand grabbed my forearm. Turning, I found myself in the grips of an airport security officer. Another bout of panic - had I left my Swiss Army Knife in my hand lugage? Did my face resemble that of some terrorist? Were police marksmen training their weapons on me? One false move and one of those slow motion bullets you see on CSI would start its long journey into my upper left aorta.

Panic of one kind was replaced with panic of another when the firm grip of the law turned into a soft, caressing stroke and an effeminate voice said "You've got lovely skin. Are you married?".