vendredi 20 juin 2003

Births, marriages and ... a court circular "Don't forget Tristam's birthday." I shall, of course, when he actually celebrates it tomorrow, on that musical midsummer day. Not for lack of being reminded by his Gran, who's now kite-flying above the clouds after the winter wretchedness, this year, of one of her four-monthly cycles(*) and has said this still slightly short of half a dozen times to his wayward uncle of late. After all, a bright lad's "coming of age" is a once-in-a-lifetime horror. Unless I'm mistaken and in those badlands just north of Hadrian's Wall, they still expect you to wait until 21 and three-quarters. Since I haven't bothered to buy Tristam anything and have no ever-growing 18th-birthday present for him in the shape of the newspapers of his lifetime, I thought he might be proud and pleased to have the "blogosphere" shown two or three pictorial details of distant days. Above, for instance, is an illustration of how alarmingly tall the fellow already was during the last lengthy visit Marianne and I paid to his part of the world in the summer of 1996, after a stay in York. Despite those swords (with Marianne) and an interest in military history inherited from his father Jon, I'm relieved to report that Tristam abandoned a plan to enlist and have Her Britannic Majesty's forces pay for the furthering of his academic career. Nothing, however, stopped his growth in all other respects, not even a fire extinguisher or putting funny hats, hefty books and large rocks on his head, or even hanging him from trees. Moments after this second snap was shot, that swing snapped, but I forget who was projected like a missile down the garden when it did. Not Rowan, in the picture. Maybe it was me. Proof that even the Dumfries and Galloway lowlands of Scotland sometimes see the sun and a chill sea people are insane enough to swim in (myself reluctantly included, but where there are waves I just have to go in, regardless) came on the fine day of a beach picnic. Burying Tristam and making a Sand-Venus of him was undoubtedly, in retrospect, one of numerous bids simply to silence a youth whose capacity to ask questions is boundless and exhausting, even after lights out (thus Grandpa, pictured, pretends to be otherwise engaged). T's very first utterance was probably not "Waaahhhh" but "Why?"... I've never asked his mother about that, but the date is not swiftly forgotten. The event prevented his bit of the family from coming to one of those interminable French weddings where the food, while excellent, came so late in the evening that most of the cross-Channel guests must have feared they were going to keel over. At least one had to go and sleep in the car-park before the liquid sustenance was replaced by more substantial fare. That marriage required the renting of a lovely Norman manor-house for visiting guests and I remember most of it really quite well since it was my own. I shamefacedly confess that by the time Catherine and I cut the gigantic cake, I could scarcely still hold a knife straight. And I want, "M.K.", my picture, please, of your own much-photographed wedding dress. How many times need I remind you? Though I scarely blame you for second thoughts now you see what I do to people in the blog. Other attempts to silence Tristam included banishment. The lad may have spent whole tracts of his childhood under canvas or in an old caravan safely detached from the family home. But this is also because his Dad has a habit of acquiring ruined piles of stone and utterly transforming them, from foundations to roof, into robust and environmentally friendly houses. Bedrooms for T. and sister Rowan are rarely the first bits to get built. Maybe Jon will end up pursuing this multi-crafted skill in France one day. It's not as if there's a lack of demand. I have yet to reply to an e-mail from "the Colonel", Hugh, in South Africa called 'Champagne Time!!' where he announced to his own world that he now owned a house in southwest France (to reveal exactly where would be most unfair, if he's to have any peace: hence I do so). But now I digress from Tristam a moment to congratulate Hugh! He will not be alone by the time he gets there. A rough calculation performed by a bunch of us over lunch at the "canteen" of late suggested that, at the current rate of the purchase and rebuilding of relics, foreigners may outnumber the French in the south within another 15 years or so. This is not always resented by such "locals" as remain; at least one small town has its elected English mayor. Tristam's attention to detail extends to the building of things, as he was here. Exactly what it is I forget, but it absorbed him for as long as a rock-pool can, even one which appears to contain very little to the less practised eye. Despite the family gift for construction, design and (for the most part) stunning patience -- talents that have also given Jon painful back trouble and his wife Louise an awful time after too much exposure to the more toxic aspects of decorating -- once their present task is accomplished, it may be time to move on. What they do is neither recognised nor rewarded as it deserves to be where they are and the costs charged by municipal authorities for simple tasks they can manage better themselves but are not legally allowed to undertake, such as linking their piping to the water mains, are scandalous! So it's Louise who crops Tristam's head. At least, I think that's what's going on here, rather than a search for local flora and fauna. Why pay somebody else to do what you're fine at yourself, while it's evident that he thoroughly enjoyed it? Once he's 18, though, after "pestering" me with many a query about journalism, among other prospects for an interesting future, he might be empowered to deny his mother such pleasures. Oh well, since she's herself a darned good photographer, she'll have more time for such other skills. Yeah. Pix. I've spoken to Béa, long since back from Nigeria and her subsequent hols. She did remember to take some for me and they will be released to the world after I've seen her, maybe next week. Another colleague, Gina, has also promised to mail me some of her snaps from Algeria, where she covered the terrifying earthquakes that literally shook one of my friends at the canteen. He, poor Malek, was in an eighth-floor room during one of them, as part of the neighbourhood collapsed. His account of the aftermath is even worse than what I've read to date. That, Tristam, is no matter for your birthday, however, even in blogland! So in the hope that this e-card turns both of your ears bright red, I wish you the happiest of days! ______ *She, the poor soul, has it far worse than I do. Where my "downers" are, usually, relatively short-lived and manageable, as I indicated in an earlier entry on cyclothymia, for reasons nobody's yet been able to fathom, my mother's low and high spells are far more extreme and come evenly spaced in those four-monthly cycles which don't even coincide with the seasons. She copes admirably well with something for which a really effective treatment has proved, over the years, extraordinarily elusive, despite all the progress in medicine and psychology. 8:58:31 PM  link   your views? [] 'Where've I been?' Time-warping my mind. Somebody -- Neil McIntosh -- thought at 'The Guardian' that, let alone we novices, even seasoned 'bloggers' are bored now, or maybe even becoming boring. "This is a whole new social minefield...," Neil laments. One comment that "real life trumps blogging" does have its merits, along with a decent bit of sunshine, for heaven's sake! Recent absences have been for reasons mainly either too dull or just too distressingly horrible to disclose, but they've not stopped me getting my feet wet and my fingers burned. Fearful trouble resulted after I 'phoned an old friend, not spoken to in several years, who just happens to be the most gifted astrologer I know. Yes, I'm afraid you did read that right. S.'s insights astonish me. Being a practical, down-to-earth person, she soon switched on her computer and called up an old chart of mine. Whereupon I informed her that it was all a bit "wrong" anyway, since my mother had only recently expressed certainty about the hour I was born. This, you see, changes what's in the ascendant. It became a mite unnerving, but entertaining, to be told what had happened to me in the past couple of years, from My Condition (right down to the intestinal gruesomeness of recent weeks) to one or two travels abroad, the state of my finances, an encounter or two, and even a little detail about my previous evening. You don't have to believe this, of course, but I gave the woman no help whatever and most of S.'s findings were so spot on, despite my silence on clues, that it led to a fun conversation. Thing is, I'm not terribly sure that she gets any real assistance from the stars. Does it have to be that complicated? When she was done, I pointed out that I also had difficulties with reincarnation, something else she's long studied. But the other thing is: I've been reading too much leading-edge physics of late. Time appears to be non-existent, since we simply perceive things in terms of past, present and future because of the nature of our perceptual apparatus, while the other dimensions those frontline scientists are exploring are equally strange. Consciousness itself remains a wide-open debate. I have absolutely no problem, therefore, with the notion that some people can employ astrology, or whatever other mind-stretching or focussing "tool" or method it might be, to leap around those dimensions a little and even get inside heads, so to speak. Then S. told me she didn't believe in reincarnation either, except in purely symbolic terms. Since even for her, past lives were just one illusion among many, I asked her why she hadn't bothered to explain that little aspect of her outlook during the years I used to chase her. "Because you weren't ready for it then," she rather smugly replied. The hell was unleashed when I raved on to somebody I really should have known far better than to have bothered, since such matters can be profoundly disturbing to people who care not even to think of these things. I did apologise, but too late, I fear. Another somebody, however, who I've very long known as being at least as rooted in the "real world" as S. herself, but usually more Cartesian in her mindset, astonished me by asking whether I might put her in touch with my old friend! There's one condition. Even divested of the mumbo-jumbo, the money-spinning, the deceit, the false hopes and ridiculous trappings that go with so much of the "trade", I've yet to be convinced there's a clairvoyant in the world who can "see" any further than our "freedom of choice." That's why the quote that prefaces my newest read -- back in the sci-fi and bitterly controversial nanotech domain currently exercising politicians and those who want to carve out our ethical codes -- made such a striking start: 'Free will is an illusion caused by our inability to analyse our own motives' Charles Darwin Thus is the tone set for 'Mappa Mundi' by Justina Robson (her corner of the Web), which I'll write up in due course. On nanotech, Wired has yesterday/today produced an admirable, link-rich article by Noah Schachtman, called 'Rage Against the (Green) Machine', in which he covers not only "grey goo" but "green goo", and weighs up some of the arguments. zzz Back at the "canteen", fellow worrywart Baudier was exercised by the salts I was dropping in my water, which led to a discussion on something else long considered, like astrology, the domain of none but frauds and weirdos. He could never understand why France's scientific community almost unanimously set about crucifying one of their own finest, Jacques Benveniste (his own corner). This hitherto respected researcher in 1988 published his findings in 'Nature', on the "memory of water", suggesting that, as some people are proposing once again (HealthWorld Online), water retains a "memory" of substances dissolved in it, which might "explain" why homeopathy seems to "work". All the palaver earned Benveniste his special place at Charlatans, a lively French site which reported the "story of an imposture". But fellow Frenchman Michel Schiff, of the National Centre for Scientific Research (English door to the CNRS), wrote a book (Amazon France) in Benveniste's defence, which also made it into English. This is discussed by the open-minded meryfela, another liker of interesting controversies, also known as Jeff Merrifield (his home). It was a news brief on the Beeb early this week that sent me back to 'The Guardian' for more on Benveniste and indeed the 18th-century founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, whom the paper considered "far out". The 'New Scientist' also returns to the scene, with an "Icy claim that water has memory" ... and a chance of vindication for Benveniste. There sure is "far more in heaven and earth...", especially earth! It was back in 1995 that I ventured into poetry on the grand scale, with 'Gaia's Complaint'. 'Gaia' got some kind and keen observations from an editor at Faber, and a mixture of high praise and rude remarks from others, but is probably best off where she is, unpublished! After all, Gaia is not the only woman in the work and the others (S. helped inspire it) are still very much alive. Poor old Gaia. She's endured some very low blows of late, but 'Gaia theory' is making a striking comeback. Except that now we're supposed to call it "Earth system science". So romantic, isn't it? What was wrong with the more heavenly notions? Maybe I'm just warped. Twisted neurones. 1:24:46 AM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.