365 Ways With Words

Think For Yourself And Question Authority

                                        Think for yourself and question authority

                                        The mantra of Timothy Francis Leary

                                        Was a natural step further than the initial

                                        Turn on, tune in, drop out

 

The most dangerous man in America                                        

Gave Social Dimensions of Personality for a PhD                                        

And sought to push, to change and not to conform                                        

So that by 1964 his phrase                                        

You have to go out of your mind to use your head                                        

Made merit of behavioural ambiguity                                        

 

                                        He learned more about the brain and its possibilities

                                        In five hours with mushrooms

                                        Than in 15 years of study

                                        With Ginsberg and LSD

                                        The word was spread 

                                        Behaviour is affected; better than through regular therapy

                                        Alcoholism – cured

                                        Criminal behaviour – cured

 

Dismissed from MIT                                        

He established the League of Spiritual Discovery                                        

Until arrest for possession                                        

Of a small amount of Mary Jane                                        

On his wife's person – 30 years and $30,000                                        

 

                                        In bed with Lenon and Yoko

                                        John penned the Bed-In song, Come Together

 

Jailed in '70, he was psych tested using his own tests                                        

And escaped!                                        

Algeria and Switzerland beckoned                                        

But from take off in Kabul, extradition followed landing in the UK                                        

To face 95 years in Fulsom jail                                        

Enough time to write the Starseeds...                                        

 

                                        On release in '76

                                        He toured the circuits

                                        The musos, movers and shakers attracted

                                        And graduated to circuits of electronics and virtual reality

                                        Until prostate cancer cut him in '96

                                        Amongst friends and carers – even under videotape

 

The moody Legend,                                        

Hair of The Seeker                                        

His varied voice is still heard, with nervous chuckle,                                        

Wherever the others are found                                        

His was a storied life that contrived no convention or robot poetry                                        

Ageless on the Dark Side

                                        Art thou pale for weariness
                                             Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
                                        Wandering companionless
                                              Among the stars that have a different birth,
                                        And ever changing, like a Joyless eye
                                             That finds no object worth its constancy?

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)                    

I begin today with Shelley because it is apt to this History lecture – the moon's shadow has cast a long shadow upon all our lives since his time.

Imagine if you will on a dark night on Earth not so very long ago looking upwards to see three great cities twinkling in the Earth's vacuous grey shadow. On such an occasion, when the cloudless night sky would silently welcome the moon's rise, an eery dot-matrix face would appear: Tranquility, Serenity and Crisium. So named after their locations in the large mares or stable basaltic plains within which the first generation of Helium 3 mines appeared. These cities were really low-rise luxury residential complexes.

For many on the earth at that time glimpsed them and would be reminded of the old Great Leap, the setting aside of national ambitions for the common good and for the beginning of the manned push into the solar system. For others it was a source of temptation, an escape from a troubled and overcrowded world of constant problems – everyone knew work on the moon was lucrative, even menial work, despite the risks.

From the surface of the moon life on Earth seemed distant, like the staring down at so much bacteria in a petri dish. Yes, all the entertainment and culture came from the surface, but down there were also the innumerable problems of climate, earthquake and tsunami, thievery, murder and rape. The air held pathogens, disease-carrying mosquitoes and infection and the very food was a source of contaminants. It was another world – one gladly left behind. Life on the moon was decidedly better and since only the wealthy could afford such a lifestyle, only the wealthy lived there: and the carefully screened workers who met their needs.

Many of the large gardens were beautiful, even by Earth standards. Amongst the most ostentatious displays of plants, song birds and running water the honoured guest could be mistaken for believing that one was in a grand country park or nature reserve. The best properties took advantage of the view by having visibility domes that took in the view of the glorious rotating view at any time. The Mooners, for that is what they ended up being called, felt a cut above everyone else down below. At first a derisery term, the multi-billionaires quickly adopted and loved it. For no one else was a Mooner.

Beneath the three cities were the nuts and bolts departments that kept the cities working in the manner in which they had been designed. Food manufacture and water recycling, energy storage and maintenance all had to be done without disturbing the opulent lifestylers. It was also here that the workers lived.

At that time the workers looked after all of the physical needs of the Mooners. They provided everything from maintenance of systems to maintenance of structures, from restaurants to room service, from satisfaction of the sexual deviant to spiritual sustenance of the etherially susceptable. Just because the rich Mooners left the Earth, it didn't mean they wanted the pleasures of Earth to leave them. For the workers the univeral roster system of 6-months included one week's holiday, with the option to stay for a further 6 given only after a complete service record and medical proved acceptable. Most stayed if they were able. Indeed, the growth of workers in all sectors was one of the problems with the existing cramped accommodation. The few philanthropic Mooners granted better employee benefits, such as longer rest periods on Earth and better accommodation, however, most of the employers were somewhat uneasy about living quite so close to their employees.

The decision was therefore made to move all the workers away to the other side of the moon, to a new worker city in the Daedalus crater where they would have space, a sky and their own economy. The city was rapidly built and a connecting rapid rail system connected the workers with their jobs in under one hour. With such an arrangement the 6-months limit on each contract was therefore extended indefinitely at the outset and renewal of all contracts. Almost all of the workers, now Mooners in their own right, happily accepted and settled into a new if remote life.

This greatly improved things. More luxury housing was constructed with the accompanying infrastructure and extra employees who lived and thrived in Daedalus. Life on the moon just got better for everyone. It has often been described as a golden age, albeit a short-lived one.

You may therefore ask what happened? What changed such a good life for all. Why don't the rich live on the moon anymore? It's such a very different place now.

The answer lies in something at first barely noticed: the workers, those who lived and worked in the dark side crater, were not just happy with their longer contracts and better living conditions, but they seemed not to age. This was only noticed with after the first two or three years. Medical scans showed their bodies remained completely unchanged. Within five years teams of medical scientists were analysing everything from water supply to interplanetary radiation in order to define exactly what it was these people were experiencing, but their studies were disturbingly –at least to them– inconclusive. Others, less scientifically-minded, contributed that the Platonic idea of concentric rings, or celestial spheres, were evident. The moon's celestial sphere was on the cusp of the Earth's ageing and the cosmos's ageless ones. Whatever the cause, those who lived on the far side looked like they would live into eternity whilst the rest below naturally died, just as humans had ever done. The workers were overjoyed to discover that being on the other side meant everlasting life and looked forward to the rest of eternity under an Earth-free sky. As yet, none had considered the problems of eternity. We will discuss these issues in next week's lecture.

The novelty of eternal life, however, changed everything. It caused a rapid cessation in the availability of contracts. Those with permanent residency suddenly realised the value of their circumstance and, quite understandably, did everything in their power to stay put. It also altered their relationships with their employers. They were suddenly at an advantage once it was realised that their bosses would age and die leaving their remains to be sent hurtling towards the sun or stay eternally buried in monumental crater-top tombs, whilst their menial employees would carry on happily living oblivious to age. This began to cause friction. Instant dismissals took on more sinister tones – being taken back to Earth meant being taken back to die.

Tensions arose after the more exclusive Mooner clients began to build second lunar homes on the other side. Although the workers still attended their employees, who never visited their old houses anymore and grew sick of the sight of the Earth, their relationships, now leveled again, took on more distressed tones. For it was reasoned that if the workers continued with their work forever, their income could conceivably also eternally rise, a principle on which some of the employers founded resentment. It seems the rich treasure being richer than others more than anything else. Employee investments in Earth enterprises were therefore suspended for the duration of all contracts. After all, most investment services were owned by their employees. This along with sporadic acts of cruelty on the part of certain employers, may have led to reprisals, but it also led to the foundation of the first informal council of lunar workers and their political representation on all matters. By sheer weight of numbers they could not be ignored. It was the beginnings of lunar government and their representation on Earth and beyond.

And then it occurred to the Mooners that if they built their own satellite, away from the moon but in the same orbit, away from the now firmly established frictions, they could have things as they wanted. The Stanford toruses were constructed and all Mooner wealth was withdrawn, leaving the workers alone to govern themeselves to their hearts' content. Which they did, rapidly exploiting the health benefits, the tourism and scientific and exploratory potentials of looking beyond Earth. All this was done without bloodshed and with clear consciences. I'm a little prejudiced, my father being amongst the first to attend the council.

I began with Shelley's poem wherein he describes the moon as finding 'no object worth its constancy'. I think it's hardly possible that the poet was descibing the perspective we enjoy now, and ever will, but perhaps it is the irony of history that things have turned out quite the way they have. We are Mooners, the envy of humanity, and we truly find no object worth its constancy. Class dismissed.

The Earth as a Living Entity

Is the Earth alive? Does it have an intelligence? Can we 'know' the Earth?

This hypothesis has been offered by many – the weird and wacky and the straight dead serious. It also has a long pedigree. The ancients had to devise mythological stories to account for their world's conception, the most familiar being the Greek story of Gaia, the primordial deity and mother of all. A similar idea in the Hindu pantheon is that of Bhumi the goddess that sits on a square dias that is carried by four elephants, a motive that may also sound familiar as it likely spawned other origin myths. That these Earth Mother ideas sprang naturally to our ancestors should come as no surprise – we each have parentage and to anthroporphically transfer this idea to non-human species and even inanimate objects is understandable.

A more recent and popularly-adopted idea of a living planet Earth comes from atmospheric scientist with John Major glasses, James Lovelock, who in his 1972 paper, Gaia as Seen Through the Atmosphere, proposed a simple idea – that various non-living mechanisms in the earth, the atmosphere and oceans actively regulate the rest of the biosphere and that this indicates that the whole Earth is some sort of living entity, that it works together as more than simply the sum of its parts. Not only that, the biological entities that inhabit the Earth also change and co-evolve with the planet. The inference is that the Earth (or at least these systems) is alive.

On the face of it, this seems a simple and easy-to-understand idea: our Earth, the cradle of life, is a complex web of interactions on the biological level that implies a greater whole. What the Gaian Hypothesis postulates further, however, is that this then infers that the Earth is more than just a home for animate things, or even that life effects changes to the planet, but that somehow this complex organic-inorganic system is alive. It is a system that actively promotes life in all its forms over time. Further still we, as part of this living whole, are connected with the rest of it. In effect, we are part of Gaia.

For many in the scientific community, such as the outspoken Richard Dawkins, this idea is beyond controversial. That the organic and inorganic elements of this world are somehow connected and that this presupposes some sort of intelligence of the planet is ludicrous. The very basis is unverifiable (how can you test for this system?) and therefore qualifies as a burn-at-the-steak heresy – a pseudoscience.

It is also lampooned as another flowery manifestation of 60s hippie thinking, a love-in idea of wistfully-minded environmentalists who see what they want to see. Surely Science has ALL the answers without resorting to anthropomorphic wish-wash?

Which standpoint is right? Well, it depends. The Gaian hypothesis would have been acceptable to many of our ancestors because it fitted with their mythological understanding of the complexity found on Earth – 'complex' meaning intelligent. From the time of Newton, however, the popular understanding would have changed. Newtonian physics assumed that the structure of the universe was such that it behaves according to principles that can be measured and predicted. Such certainties led to ideas that required no reasoning for natural activities, no first cause and no interpretation: things are the way they are because that's how they are. Darwin's ideas of natural selection fitted quite nicely into this pre-existing model because the principle was direct and required only the idea of adaptation to the environment to account for diversity. There was no need of a overall controlling factor, an unknown teleological God-like addition to the mix, in order to understand the Earth as it exists.

So, the objections to the Gaian Hypothesis stem directly from a philosophical perspective that; insists on a lack of intelligence, divorces fact from human-centred interpretation, and insists that the Earth cannot and will not be alive no matter how much we imagine it to be so. This is so firmly entrenched a position that any opinion that even hints at contradiction is labeled pseudoscience and entirely written off. The homologous but contrary straight-jacket viewpoint is generated from unwavering Gaian adherents who see all the earth and everything in it as an expression of a mothery deity hard-done by nasty polluting humans. The Earth 'cries out' to us to help it, stop the destruction and despoiling and views the efforts of Science as little more than a manifestation of black arts. The arguments for and against will no doubt eternally extend along the same lines as religious and atheist perspectives: in essence it is possible to interpret them as the same thing.

For myself, the Gaian Hypothesis is a useful way to interpret our place in the world around us. For what harm can come from an understanding of complex and interacting systems that infers an intelligence beyond our understanding? If our world really is unique and there are none others in the entire cosmos that are made up of trees and fish and polar bears, then this makes it incredibly precious. Each species extinction is a cosmic tragedy and the breakdown of a system could be universally significant, let alone vital to our continued existance. If our world is one of billions and life exists everywhere, the argument still holds – species rights will be vital to our future wherever they are: even our species. This chattering human animal sees, records, changes, builds and destroys the environment within which it exists. We are part of the Earth as much as viruses, plankton, elephants and earthquakes. We get to 'know' it intimately in all its manifestations. Even if we believe the Earth can do without us, we cannot exist without it. We are now so widespread that we have become a contributing factor to its continuation, or otherwise. Some argue our change of the atmosphere is unstoppable whereas others argue the Earth's Gaian systems will account for it and adapt, even if that means removing us in some great Noachian extinction event.

Whatever is the truth, we must not forget our place as perhaps the only creatures capable of thinking of the Gaian Hypothesis, the only creatures who are able to destroy their own planet and the only creatures able to rescue and fix it. We are Gaia.

 

The Fridge That Talked

The trip was past its introductory phases and the altered state gradually kicked in where almost anything could be expected. She blissfully let it go.

To the observer, not that there were any in her subterranean London flat that Saturday evening, she appeared a figure transfixed on the edge of her sofa. It was a beautiful, enjoyable high that lifted the soul and breathed life into her mind. Taking in the visual hallucinations that perfectly blended her sensations of the patterned carpet beneath her feet, the hardness of the table, the deep squidgy sofa, her living body and her sensitive fingers became the antennae of perception to aspects found within normally-hidden objects. She was also aware of her humour returning and with it the giggles began. Each cascade of laughter had a quality – florets of spreading flowers, each volume of air transfixed by the delightful quantities of oxygen that spread through her body and returned changed and balanced. In fact, there was a balance of sorts with everything. A connection with all. Ooh, this felt good.

She was happy – happier than she'd been all week, if not all month. The thoroughly pleasant sensations brought with them a warmth and generous attitude. They worked both ways; towards and from her. She couldn't stop the laughing, and didn't want to.

All her visual cues were tweaked in amusing and attention-grabbing ways. On the table was a glass of water, the liquid filling the vessel as a foot in a sock, both separate and intrinsic to themselves. There was waterness and glassness, soft and hard. Together they had separate meanings, together they were different yet became a perfectly nice combination. She could feel all this without touching. It was a known. Other things took her attention: on her left the cushion seemed an eternity of comfort she wanted to dive into, but felt it might go on forever if she started. Her eyes took in other familiar objects and they transformed with emphasis and meaning into greater and deeper things. Her neurons were remembering links between things that in everyday life had disassociation. Fascinating!

She had carefully prepared for this time – turning off her mobile, locking her door and drawing the curtains. This was a precious moment between her and the 'sacred medicine', as she called it. For much of the weel she had watched her diet and hadn't eaten anything at all that day. Consequently she had hunger in her stomach, but even this sensation now spoke to her: she was ready to consume experience.

The more she sat there considering her empty stomach, the more the kitchen appeared to beckon. She found herself standing in the doorway. All she could hear was the hum of the fridge motor as the freon circulated the rear vents. She touched it. The white door felt very cold – fridgey. She wanted to put her ear to it: "Hello!" she said.

To her astonishment the fridge rattled to a stop as if exhuding a long breathy sigh. Except now, of course, the astonishment was mixed with her trip astonishment at everything.

"Hello!" said the fridge back to her, although it sounded like an echo of her voice. In fact, she wasn't sure if this was her echo, a loop in her head, or a real voice. She said it again. "Hello!"

"I already said hello!" said the fridge.

It definitely said something, in a low moanish voice. Her mouth dropped. "WHAT? You're a fridge. You're not alive."

The fridge appeared to sigh, although to her unaffected aspect of her eyes the fridge did nothing of the sort. "I know."

"But, what do you mean?"

"I didn't mean anything. You did." retorted the fridge

"I meant, what did you say? You said hello! Fridges don't speak."

"Why not?" it barked back. "Have you ever said hello directly to a fridge before? I expect not."

She grabbed either side of the tall fridge with both hands. "Hang on – you mean fridges can talk?"

"Well, I can't say all fridges can. I expect some of them don't, some won't and some can't."

"But this is amazing! I can't believe it."

"Hmmm... I thought you'd say that. Perhaps it's something to do with not listening."

"But, I mean, you don't have a mouth. Where's your voice come from?"

"I  don't know. Where does yours come from? I wonder if you have ever thought about it – your voice. Is it simply the words you annunciate? The sounds? Or is it something deeper, something from within? And where does that come from?"

Her mouth dropped even further. Her jaw was aching with drinking a million gallons of astonishment. Per second. "How? What? My voice? But where does yours come from. I think and then I say the words. I am the words I think." She was quite content with that little piece of observation.

"Precisely so."

She thought for a second. "So, you're trying to tell me that you think too?"

"I have a lot of time on my hands."

"But you don't have a brain, or hands or a mouth."

"Yes, you already said that. I suppose it's like this – I have time to consider what I think. I don't have to establish first where these thoughts originate. I don't have to convince myself that I have no brain and therefore I cannot think. I merely think. All the time. What I don't do is talk. Actually, this is the first time."

"The first time you've talked?"

"Yes."

"Why haven't you talked before? To me?"

"There are two reasons. For a start, there's the communication issue – how do I do it?"

"Yes, how are you doing it?" she opened the door, peered into the freezer department and enjoyed the coolness of air on her skin. She even flicked the light on and off several times to take in the effects of lumination on her retina.

"Do you mind?" the fridge interrupted.

"Oh, sorry." she apologised and returned to her first position with an ear to the door.

"And you don't have to do that." he resumed.

"Do what?"

"Have your ear to the door. You can talk quite normally to me without looking like some aural limpet."

She laughed vigourously.

"As I was saying, the means of communication open to me are limited. And right now seemed like a good time, after the proper introduction."

"The proper introduction? Oh you mean the mushrooms."

"The mushrooms? Oh dear me, no. I mean that you were polite enough to say hello in the first place. It can be difficult for a stationary object."

"Wow! So you were waiting all this time for me to get high and talk to you?"

"Waiting? No, not really. But introductions are difficult at the best of times. Ask the washing machine."

She turned to the open mouth of the washing maching from which a long red sock hung like a tongue. She went over and touched the machine. "Hello!" she softly intoned, stroking the plastic moudling. Nothing came back.

"I suppose he's not talking today. He gets like that." the fridge called over.

She turned back to address the fridge but halted: it seeemed to be pulsating and gyrating, as if on a slow sultry walk on the spot. She giggled like a child. "What's the second thing. You said there were two things that stopped you. Erm, how do you do it, and...?"

"Why."

"I'm sorry?" She came back over to hold the fridge again with both hands.

"Why is the second thing. Why should I talk. A lot of machines simply don't want to. It's not worth it. Perhaps you don't understand. Actually, I think you won't, not being mechanical."

"Machines don't want to talk?"

"Don't and won't. At the end of the day they are servants, at least in terms of function. You don't honestly expect them to enjoy it all, do you? And then to also give up their thoughts? No, I don't know of one in 100 machines that would do it."

She dropped her head at this idea, even more astonishing than a talking fridge, that machines wouldn't want to talk. "But you are – talking, I mean. Why not the washing machine, the toaster, the... blender." She staggered, her head swimming.

"Look, why don't you sit down. It looks like we're going to have a long and heartfelt conversation about machines, life and meaning, so get comfortable. It might be better if you have some water. There's some ice cubes in the tray."

So with glass in hand, she sat entranced by her cold cabinet companion's philosophy, stories and reasoning until weariness overtook her at about 1 a.m., she made her apologies and fell into her bed.

The next morning, she entered the kitchen and saw the chair placed in front of the big white door. It came flooding back to her in imprecise waves, like so many detached dreams coalescing in the air. She sat as before and placed her hands on either side. "Hello!" she tentatively whispered, as if embarrassed by her assumption that a mechanical device would be able to communicate. In her mind it felt as if someone else, someone human, had entered the room and was silently mocking her for such extraordinary foolishness. There was nothing but the near-silent whirr of the motor.  She put down her arms, unsure whether the fridge wouldn't or just couldn't.

Spy on the Run

Beep-beep-beep! It was a message from control.

Just checking ur ok. Where r u?

He acknowledged with a cursory response, "Will have info soon. Scramble all comm in future. Code Red."

How long would he have to put up with the petty, small-minded approach to spying. Didn't they know that field operatives like him had to make snap life-and-death decisions and take matters into hand as things arose?

Peered over the bridge onto the tracks he took a quick photo with his communicator and replaced it in his pocket. Too busy to notice him, and dressed as railway line contractors, the enemy appeared to be replacing old drainage and conducting excavations beside the wood. But something was not right. He had to get closer.

Retreating back down the snowy road he reckoned he would enter the forest edge by scaling the electronic perimiter fence. He didn't have his usual equipment with him, so he squatted and pulled out his notebook, looking up E for electricity. He found a secret equation he'd uncovered on Operation Library:

Yes! Yes, this would do it. Using it he scaled the fence, taking care not to catch his scarf on the rusty and spindly wire end where it sagged.

One hurdle done, he scanned the screening wood – no guards, no dogs, nothing. Perhaps it was mined. He looked around but found nothing to indicate mine-laying. But maybe this was also part of their ruse – that for 100 yards it would be clear and then ka-boom! It was better to take things nice and slow. This was the best approach with mines he'd encountered in the past. He'd had some lucky escapes in his time using sticks.

Running bent over between the trees, he covered his approach, but just to be safe he grabbed a handful of cold mud and smeared it over his face: that way he could get even closer to make his observations. He was close enough now to hear the construction work being carried out – beeping trucks and the excited revving engine of the digger. The last hundred yards he managed on hands and knees until he was right up to the edge of the embankment. He checked right and left: no one looked his way. In three strides he was down the scree bank and hid crouched behind a stack of large drainage pipes.

Nearby two workers stood and talked whilst the digger moved away.

"So, what d'you reckon – Arsenal or Chelsea?"

"Give me a break. If Čech doesn't do something stupid, or get an injury, then it's a walkover."

It was sorse than he thought. He had to get it down, but their code was too quick for him. He daren't risk being seen with his communicator in hand, so he picked his notebook from his pocket, flipped to the back and scribbled, Arsenal of weapons. Czech. Operation 'Walkover'. He had to get this information back as soon as possible. But he needed a date for their attack: he'd have to keep waiting until one of them spilled the beans. Each second in enemy territory was dangerous, but he couldn't deny being so close to discovery gave him a perverse thrill.

The digger came back. The driver opened the cab and spoke to one of the two workers. He saw one of them look at his watch: "1:15 Lunch mate." At that the operator switched off the engine.

Now he had the date and time. He scribbled, January 15th lunchtime – God have mercy!

He'd uncovered so many fiendish plots in the past, but this one was bigger than anything he'd previously encountered. He knew what he had to do – get word back to base, even if it meant his life. But now he was exposed. Could he make it back up the bank without attracting their machine guns? He checked his gun – he'd had it since Christmas and it jammed a lot. Only one bullet left: enough for one. After that he'd have to hope for the best and trust his instincts.

He needed a diversion – some sabotage to keep them occupied whilst he got back. Then it occurred to him that he was in exactly the right place to...

A train rumbled slowly past, vibrating the stack of piping he hid behind. If he could loosen the ties the whole thing would come crashing down on the tracks and keep them busy for hours. He checked his pocket – he was in luck! He had remembered his Swiss Army knife – handy for just such occasions, or to fight it out if the worst came to the worst. With deft fingertips he prized open the long blade and admired its shiny glean in the early afternoon light.

"Ah, my trusty friend. Together we've kept them at bay these long years. Once more I call on you. To work!"

He began with a quick sawing motion on the cables that tied the pipes together. One down, two more to go. He moved along as stealthily as he could, every now and again popping his muddy face above the bright yellow pipes. The second and third ties snapped quickly, but they didn't budge. Not one inch, even with a push. There was nothing for it – he'd have to go around and pull them down.  Taking one last look he ran out and was pleased to see two upright safety stakes holding back the pipes from their cascade. With his wellington boot gave three good kicks to the first one. It moved – good. But as he ran to the other side he was spotted. One of the agents challenged with an "Oi! What you doing?"

He kicked with all his might. It must surely be only a matter of seconds before they turned their guns on him. With a final kick the stake gave way and the pipes began their relentless journey to the tracks. He had to lie on the ground and allow the pipes to run over him. They bounced over each other down to the line, making loud pipey boings as they reverberated.

He had to return to base pronto. Standing up he was aware of their approaching menacing cries and knew he had to run up the embankment as fast as he could – back towards the relative safety of the mine-infested wood and the electric fence. At the top he couldn't resist giving one last glimpse back of the glorious view of his devastation – a moment of utter triumph, a feat of unsurpassed daring and spymanship.

It was the only description they gave the transport police attending the scene at the centre of the three hour delay to rail traffic along the entire west coast line – muddy face, blue duffle coat and black wellies. A child of about 9.

River Ice – the video

Something different for today.

 

                                Through town and out beyond

                                Run rivers in clear, slow death

                                Day’s meagre heat leaves all earth and sky:

                                Life saps, saps still, to a blue glaze

 

                                Softly starts the solid stock

                                Locks a hardened skin

                                Such flimsy bergs

                                Slide to can-crush crunch

                                Barely a whisper – a frozen breath

                                And back-up, up, up

 

                                Further and higher it is clear

                                For the present

                                But inch by hoarded inch

                                Blocks collide for the new cold road

                                A cliché of life’s accumulators;

                                Decline, stiff still meanderings, folly and sense.

 

                                On either rime-reeded side

                                White-formed siege platforms hold fast

                                Until loud above the water’s ice-dropping course

                                It snaps

                                Echoing from the bank’s shelf

                                And drops itself onto the mud edge

                                Leaving cubes dangling

 

                                Old Man, Old Father, Old

                                Softly laid, rageless, bare head

                                Form of winter’s form –

                                Watcher and waiter allowing

                                How much it must it knows not

                                And cares less

                                Clasped in its channel

                                For dead days and nights

                                Until the sun’s imperious nod

Chocolate + Slogans = Conditioning

They say nostalgia's not what it used to be – a  bit like your teeth. So here's a little quiz to show how easily conditioned you were by the masters of the universe of chocolatey products. It also goes to show just how much telly you watched and how many holes in the teeth you could have avoided if you'd stuck to a plain and simple sugary-free diet. (In other words, completely unavoidable.)

How many of the chocolatey slogans can you identify from the heyday of British telly choccy adverts (some of which are still running)? Link the slogan with the mass-produced vegetable fat dairy concentrate high-sugar industrial confectionary product. Some have been updated and the first one's given. Please add more in the comment section.

Pencils and paper at the ready?  Ready, steady, go!

A hazelnut in every bite	Topic
Good rich and thick, a milk chocolate brick	Bounty
Bite it and believe it	Caramel
The longer lasting snack	Chocolate Orange
Full of eastern promise	Club
Somebody somewhere's eating a ...	Crunchie
... takes time to chew	Dairy Milk
Do you love someone enough to give them your last ...	Ferrero Rocher
If you're feeling a little p-peckish p-p-p-pick up a ...	Flake
They melt in your mouth, not in your hands	Fudge
The sweet you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite	Galaxy
The creamiest milk, the whitest bar, the goodness that's in ...	Galaxy
All because the lady loves ...	Kit-Kat
... helps you work, rest and play	Maltesers
Lighter than ordinary chocolate	Mars
Have a break... have a ...	Milk Tray
Gives you a share of country goodness	Milky Bar
Why have cotton when you can have silk?	Milky Way
A finger of ... is just enough to give the kids a treat	Minstrels
Only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate, tastes like chocolate never tasted before	Penguin
Ambassador, with these …, you're really spoiling us	Rolo
A glass and a half of full cream milk in every half pound	Texas
Thank ... it's Friday!	Toffee Crisp
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our ...	Turkish Delight
It's not Terry's, it's mine!	Twix
Take it easy with a ...	Wispa
They came in search of paradise	Yorkie

Dirty Snow

On dim. On blue. On cold.

Settled stipple the quiet night through

Crowded car top patches frozen up

Crinchy-crunch down

–Delight–

Perceivers by smoke headlit waits at lights

As fell foots fall on white, white, white...

 

Work pulls, drear demand,

On school runs mums safety

Passing chaos energy. And back.

Inhales of sharp smart sparkler

Dog poo park steam

On silver-edge maple leaves curl

–Pattern–

Shoe heel cuff crush

 

Melty dark on tread tyres passing

Blattercast left, blithercast right,

Until greying frowns line each road, lane, avenue,

The sunless cliffs in tectonic ribs unseen

Drain. Drain down. Drain off.

Darker than weightiest clouds,

–Gone–

Three Steps

It took three steps. The door was passed and he was out – out into the deep friction-free blackness of it all. It didn’t matter how regularly he donned his suit and did the maintenance check, this bit was always the best, the scariest, the most rewarding. It’s why he took the job.

Even on holiday he would dream of this moment, just before the work began when he released the attach-line and free-floated in zero. The deepness and eternity of the fierce stars all around: above, below, left, right, quiet. Absolute quiet. In the second or so before he allowed the control unit to start (and he would sometimes make this moment linger for a few seconds more than was necessary) he was just another element in the void, an insignificant speck of squidgy organic-ness in the vast, still and decidedly inorganic magnitude between the stars.

And there before him was the massive hull covered in dozens of little maintenance units, rushing speedily from one job to another. He was there to check they finished the job, didn’t leave anything attached, and didn’t get confused by bad or conflicting direction. Millions of light years in travel and achievement beyond all imaginings, there was still room for error.

The units were a fascinating spectacle as they sparked and rolled along the surface. Most of the regular work was done under the skin, but each day something had to be checked or replaced along the hull. And that was his job. It still had a certain ‘something’ to it and one or two of the younger Russian bar girls ooh’d and aah’d when he embellished some of his more tricky situations out in zero. There were a few who, perhaps with a little snobbish disdain, dismissed his stories as being of the tall kind, and worse still others saw him as a mere high-tech janitor, but he didn’t really care. The job carried a frissance of danger, a thrilling and effortless machismo that nearly always carried sufficient impact on the alcohol- and drug-opened ears that listened to the third or even fourth telling. At that point a smile would always break on his face.

But what he would never relate were the visions. Sometimes, just sometimes, before he started up the control unit he felt sure he could see something staring back at him from the stars. He never saw eyes or a face as such, but a spine-tingling feeling of an intense observation. He freaked the first time he took notice of this: he was truly scared – scared shitless! Then he tried to ignore it, assuming it was part of the whole fear of spacewalking thing, evidence of space kookiness that some got from working in zero too long. It didn’t take him long to pull himself together, quickly overcoming this stupid fear well enough to get on with the job in as near a mundane manner as possible, but each time, somewhere behind the bravado, the feeling stayed – sometimes a low-level recognition, at other times a concentration-spoiling focus near-impossible to block out. But of course, block it out he had to. He was a professional. He was a lifer, not some rooky kid spooked by weird thoughts of being watched.

The feeling was one thing, but his thoughts were another. These occurred in an undercurrent between his proper focus on the job and the very monotonous checking of code when work was slowing up. If he allowed these ramblings to take over then he began to see flashes and lights and even sounds out beyond the hull of the vessel. Only work snapped him out if it. But even when snapping out of the daydreams and anchored back in the nuts and bolts of the real world he would be momentarily shaken: was he going crazy?

He had allowed this to continue for nearly two years. He did his job, week-in and week-out, and saved his salary. He made his payments and booked his regular calls home. He allowed himself an alcohol stipend, a ‘girls and rec’ stipend and the rest he put away. All of this worked when not alone, when occupied with thoughts of his daughter, when contemplating life at the end of another contract or occupied with entertainment, but just before sleep he would feel it again, as real as ever, and his heart would momentarily race and his breathing quicken. It was then he realised what he knew, what he saw and what he felt were in conflict and the tension of this experience was growing – daily, nightly, hourly. He could keep the lid on it all for now, but deep down realised it just couldn't last that much longer: whatever he did, one day soon it would uncontrollably burst out and wreck everything.

Across the Millennium Bridge

                                Sump sink turgid mire conveyor

                                A drain in death-mixed blackened soot

                                Conveyor of the foulness

                                    – underbelly, sick, poison,

                                Taking the flotsam of 8 million detestable things

                                Across broken rocky shores from two thousand years of slime

 

                                Open swirls swift surface wavelets,

                                Upon moon and starless sub-channels dragging,

                                Hale from Richmond and beyond

                                    – calling at all stations, pick-up, drop-off,

                                Transforms to toxic by Millennium Bridge

                                Bum drops to a million acres of thick Southend mud black

 

                                From foundations roots sunken within

                                Risen around the sucking stuff, a fertility

                                    – Embankment, Savoy, Lambeth Walk, Millwall U-bend,

                                The Dome is the Canaletto piece, a £16 St Paul's

                                Further on, fluid form spires cost more, make more, more,

                                New snap-shot vistas upon brilliant horizons

                                Stretching beyond pole, tropic and sand, returns

 

                                Refined apartamentos of dazzling millions

                                Life styled anew, novel medievalism,

                                Scratching credit at each apportioned restauranto

                                And down in the lengthy bowels of Bank station

                                    – with effortless smile, dance, bow,

                                A chord-ill-sequenced accordionist plays flowery 'Delilah'

                                To the chinkety-chink of passers-by