I looked back over my old posts and now recognize a direct correlation between illness and posting frequency. So I am happy to report a diminishing need to post. As cancer was really the main story, and as that is at the boring stage then I don’t have a lot to say. There is also a disproportionate animal content in my posts that probably point to that thing you do when you play games with small children – look around the room for inspiration – ‘I know lets play Eye (I) Spy. I Spy something beginning with H, yes that right, Hen.’ I will write about the Hens again – except they are bizarrely clean, quiet, polite, not eaten and in their pen. So instead –

MELTDOWN 1

Donald Trump is a smelly poo – That’s it for political commentary – framed in the language appropriate to his intellectual capacities which really do appear to be those of a spoilt, cantankerous three year old.

What a shame it’s not funny. If ever there was an argument that no government is better than bad government, he makes it.

This picture would actually make an amazing Caravaggio or alternatively a Francis Bacon. What would you call it? – ‘Trump thanks god for Trump and a bunch of hypocritical arseholes agree’

I am actually revolted by this picture. It is pornography of the worst kind – God, power, corruption, greed and hypocrisy – and we worry about exposure to willys and bosoms. Really!

MELTDOWN 2

Well as you may know I have been having a technology meltdown. It was not really my fault, well I suppose it was because I allowed some already dodgy software to update itself, the result was the dodgy software became crazy software, that went on to enthusiastically contact all my subscribers, many times over to let them know of this and that and not much. I think it was software led spite aimed at my over confidence.

I have been teaching more technological subjects and was getting to rather enjoy it. All my students now have web server space that they can manage themselves and I can manage that space from home, helping them out remotely if required. I have had lots of help from more knowledgeable staff and IT at Hull but it was going so well I thought it was time to tinker with my own servers – so there you go – I broke them! and for a while it was rather like a runaway train – except I did not have the sense to stop stoking the fire – the more I stoked the more emails poured from the smoke stack, landing hilariously in the lap of my old PhD supervisor, Alistair who taught me everything I know about computing – ohh the shame!

Cancer wise, nowt to report. I continue to slowly deteriorate but intervention is there none yet, I am glad to say. I feel well and happy, so a slow rotting is nothing but the fate of us all – tee hee – so you might as well get used to it folks. The wonderful media correspondent Steve Hewlett – thanked me for praising his brilliant interviews on PM about his cancer – Definitely worth a listen – he says all the things I would like to say but as an experienced journalist he says it so well. Google him/cancer/R4

RT @steve_hewlett: @gravityisahat glad you appreciated the #bbcpm pieces…and the very best of luck to you! S

My boys and girls are doing fabulously well creatively if not financially – but who cares about that. Any hopes of sponging off them in our old age diminish in accord with their delightfully diminishing desire to do anything to earn money. One wants a camper van to hit the festivals and the other seems to be weighing up a career writing novels and looking after other people’s dogs in Spain. I do hope none of them disappoint by becoming sensible or worst rich.

Vincent the (not so stray anymore) cat is becoming choosy about the food we offer – no cheap tinned crap. I guess that means he is OK. He is still terrified of us but comes in at night to sleep and sometime sneaks in behind us to eat from the other cats bowls while we are preoccupied with a box set. Bobby is quite literally having hissy fits (is that where the term comes from) Mitch gives him a casual slap, (like a Mafioso style boss, impatient but caring with the new impetuous recruit, his nephew, Salvatore) but is largely indifferent. I predict by the New Year Vince will be in the house more than out, but I don’t think he will ever become a cuddly cat. His genes are screaming street and substance abuse and twocking. He has as a tick in his ear, which must drive him mad, but the chance of me doing my St Francis and ‘drawing it from out his ear hence,’ is zilch, as St Francis Newell would end up shredded or dumped in the river with concrete slippers. You can tell it’s like kitty Palermo in our garden at the moment.

MELTDOWN 3

Oh dear I have lost it – in a bid to seriously jeopardise my job this week I have started another ranting place. Contribute if you dare.

www.universitylecturer.net

I am probably taking a few risks with this but the alternative is to bore all my colleagues with my constant anarchic ramblings about removing hierarchies and returning powers to the grass roots. Instead I have started to vent online and not over a latte. I know its childish, I know its ill informed and unfair but I am sorry I just cannot stop myself. Yes I am 14 again!!!!!!! and I love it.

The gig is being advertised here

https://thejazzcafelondon.com/event/time-out-presents-lisa-marini-debut-album-launch-party-08-11-16

Maria and I have booked a table with dinner here using Ticket Master

Section: TAB7, Row GA0,  Seats 1,2

Please join us.

We are so looking forward.

https://youtu.be/9nWqomRm_ms

This is Lisa Marini, Arthur Newell and Jack Tustin captured Live at StudiOwz. The album is launched in London on November 8th.

Maria and I have heard it in its rough state and we think it is exceptional. Amazing songs, singing and playing, some really innovative sounds and best of all the sort of album you really look forward to hearing again.

As soon as the album is released I will provide a link, but in the meantime forgive this gush of pride and love.

‘Peace by Piece’ written by Lisa Marini, taken from her debut album ‘Summoned By a Foolish Magpie’.

Lots of niggly listy things done this week so thought I would drift away for a moment for a think.

RELIEF – No more medical interventions for three months save for a quick rubber snake down the throat maybe – so hurrah for that!!

FRUSTRATION – I am wrapped in a straight jacket of teaching procedures at the moment. Of course we “academics” (pah) have it easy, compared to the primary, secondary and FE folk. There is still an absence of the ultimate sanction in most universities and so we can get-away-with-it by ignoring some of the nonsense poured down like wet cement upon or heads by the dept of higher education or whatever they are called.

MOAN – I know its oft said and even ofter moaned about, but there really is an infectious management culture thing that spreads through advanced economies like the flu. Among educationalists it’s more like the plague – fatal to morale, creativity and to good teaching. Please could someone ask them all to go away and leave us beautiful creative folk alone. Any of you folk unfamiliar with A.S Neil might want a gander at this https://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/asneill.php

Summerhill looks like it could be a nightmare to be part of (eg teach, be a pupil, live near, pay for) and it has a checkered history, nearly closing in the 1980’s cos of some OFFSTEDy type scathing report. I have heard that some children in later life have scorned it vociferously and it does have something of the hippy cult exclusivity aura around it – school for the Glastonbury Poppies and Sams. Like so much that is out of the ordinary it is probably as flawed as the ordinary but at least it is trying to be different, and that has to be a good thing when so much education policy these days is about reproducing the schooling whatever the minister is in charge happened to have. Grammar schools (Blah, blah blah) are in because Teresa May went to one. And look at what she has achieved!

RANT – Our blind acceptance of the status quo annoys me a lot. Everything should be questioned, scrutinised and criticised at all times. What we are doing to children in schools is certainly worth chucking away right now. In mainstream schools we seem to have turned punishing our children into a cultural ‘must do.’ Thankfully we don’t whack them anymore but we substituted that punishment for “achieving”. That means working hard, striving lots, doing things, lots of things…. What has happened to lying on your book pulling the fluff out of your belly button? Maybe I should run a module in that discipline.

RANT CONT….When I was a teenager I used to have an orange bobbly bed cover on my bed, upon which I lay, kicking a plastic spider that hung down by a string from the light above. This activity has held me in excellent stead for those moments when only thinking about something really is all that is needed (like now). I do not need to fact check, read anything, ask anyone, complete a worksheet, pass an exam —- just bluuuuuur and out it comes all runny and delicious and maybe largely wrong (if such a notion existed). The capacity to think for yourself is at the antithesis of what eduction achieves. It cannot do so when we teach teachers the craft of not thinking for themselves. We do that by ensuring that rigidly stick to a pre(o)scribed process and that to step out of line will result in all their pupils failing the this-that-or-the-other-test-crap-nonsense.  I deplore the state of mind that uncritically thinks that education always has value and that educators should respected. Teachers are all crap I should know I am one. Education does have value sometimes for some people (mainly goody goodies and I have no time for them) and some educators are good, like some dogs are well behaved but some are not, so steer clear they may bite you or drag you under a bus. And it also ‘messes up your head man.’ Especially if you are a teenager who has been told repeatedly through her school career that GCSE’s or A levels are the end of lifes journey to hope, and if you mess them up the only way left is the Hell that is failure – OOOOOOOOhh. Apparently failures have consequences, like falling off your bike and knocking your teeth out. What nobody tells you is a/ – you may come to prefer your toothless grin to your toothed b/ – if you are that upset just go to the dentist and get a crown. Just don’t cry, despair or listen for a moment to old people cos they are all wrong! Education is really cool, when you are ready for it and if you want it. A.S Neil made it optional, he made it fun and he made it creative. We have made it compulsory, dull and regurgative of the supposed wiser ones who claim to be entitled to teach, but know nowt. Myself included.

LAUGH – Here is my favourite picture ever.

Kinda dull but I am pootling along just nicely. Same old same old.

My writing muse appears to have retired to a bungalow in Eastbourne with two poodles and a husband who collects home insulation manuals hence the long gap since my last post. Seriously for a moment – there really is a “telephone pole appreciation society” – https://www.telegraphpoleappreciationsociety.org I just wonder if they would be excited by the above item that I happen to own:

It is a ceramic insulator from a telephone pole. – but hold on -!-!-!- believe or double not, there is a collectors club for telephone pole insulators https://www.insulators.info – and yes they will soon be holding their AGM. There are many different types of insulators, some made of blue glass are rather beautiful and a few rare really sort-after ones which, strangely, look exactly like all the others. So the fictitious hobby I referred to in my opening sentence may really exist – oh to be a fly-on-the wall at the pole insulators AGM – material for a poem at the very least.

It is so easy to assume that collectors of weird stuff are themselves weird – its true of course. Everyone in the Telecom Heritage Group, of which I am a member, come across as courteous, intelligent, articulate and nice but on closer examination they turn out to be weird. It is the online conversations that generate so much heat around issues of so little consequence that betray the weirdness. Currently disagreements over validity, with regard to one members paper, on the number and placement of GPO man-hole covers in the 1950’s threaten to engulf the group in a controversy more vicious than ‘Trump’s wall.”

Speaking of shed heads – my word for men of a certain age who have brains like sheds . We have a new shed. Strictly speaking it is Maria’s but so far I have metaphorically ‘sprayed’ like Vincent our feral furry friend. It is now full of quite a bit of my ex Nonna’s garage stuff and thus has rekindled my interest in bikes, of which we have many –not riding them of course – but reviving them. There is very little as satisfying as oiling a seized up hub, freeing some rusted brake cables or best of all aligning gear sets when you are feeling blue which I am not (I hasten to add.)

Jeez I am boring myself with this old man domestic cosiness, it feels like an episode of ‘last of the summer wine’– (yes I met a man at the car-boot bearing a ferret – cutest thing ever – lives in the house, fully house trained – nice to children and dogs, highly intelligent but a little bit pungent) but the grim fact is I have nothing to share but stories of sheds, real and virtual and their residents. There is a lot of family news but I am keeping that quiet – all very exciting though – we hope.

Oh yes – I was in arms reach of the fabulous Jeremy Corbyn at a rally in York. Having sung my socialist credentials loud and strong, me, the boys, the boys friends and the girl went to ‘Bettys’ a famously overpriced tea shop in York where your cream jug is solid silver (not plate) and the jug of coffee would probably have paid for the rest of Jeremy’s leadership campaign. Highlights were the PA system, which looked like it was last used by Lenin and necessitated a good number of polythene bags thrown over it to protect it from the rain, as well as some Heath Robinson wooden scaffolding to stop it falling over and potentially eliminating some well meaning supporters and the man himself. He is not suave, cool or particularly articulate, not charismatic or slick just – true – and that will do for me and the loads of people who came out in York to cheer his somewhat muddled sentences ( a bit of a Prescott in that respect) most of whom were very young. He was charmingly preceded by a highly articulate Romanian young woman student who announced herself as ‘I am Romanian. I am one of the people who according to the Daily Mail, you should be frightened of.’ This was actually the best moment of the night. Some of the other socialist twaddle delivered by socialist priests was exactly that, twaddle. The food and the coffee in Betty’s was ‘divine darling’ – how we chuckled ironically as we tucked into £75.00 worth of posh Nescafe and listened to Cole Porter on the white grand. Left a big tip for the workers though – ra ra to red me.

Aha another bit of news – This Saturday the reformed family band is performing on the green outside our house. This promises to be a fun disaster as we have barely rehearsed – George and Arthur not at all – the rest of us old geezers are as utterly useless as ever- memory chasms, sausage fingers and nerves will no doubt litter the green like empty fag packets did on the Swanley School playing field after an afternoon of brutal humiliation and pretend smoking (no inhaling it makes you sick and cough stuff up in French).

Speaking of fags I occasionally fantasize about having one as a prop in those social situations where people ask me how I am, with a (plain speaking but deeply compassionate MacMillan nurse supporting the middle aged bloke staring out of a rainy hospital window in Sheffied advert) tone or when I just want to look cool – projecting something like the ‘who the gives a damn about cancer’, artist type – Leonard Cohen (alive –still smoking I think) springs to mind or Lou Reed (dead?). Maybe its time to refresh the image – a makeover perhaps – I admit to being weary of me – that slightly belly bloated, ill chap who has shrunk three inches in three years – I need to look creatively existential even when I am singularly failing to be so.

My teaching schedule next semester is very full and quite ‘challenging’ (which means teaching lots of stuff I know sod all about and thus will have to engage in significant study starting now!) but the new department is doing very well with lots of new students and a jolly staff team – it would be great fun if I did not continue to see myself as outside looking in. That won’t change so I best adapt to voyeurism.

I await the results of some non-invasive tests. Been down the tube yet again. Its beginning to feel like a second home. They should put inspiring poems and bra adverts on the walls like the real tube. Get the impression there is nothing much up just the usual super cautiousness. Once you are as ill as me they investigate every little change in your body – so a slightly extended nose hair can trigger alarm bells that result in yet another tube ride. Ahh me. The nurse who was slightly deaf was also deeply reassuring. She asked me what was wrong with me. I explained, she did not understand or possibly did not hear, anyway she asked if I was getting medicine, I said yes, she asked is it working, I said yes, she said well that’s all that matters isn’t it smiled and carried on with her paperwork – I felt a buzz of simple joy.

Talking of simple joy. Two of Maria’s friends came over and one was particularly and genuinely enamoured with the phone box installation – she really got it in a way that nearly everyone doesn’t. Suddenly the last year seemed like a good one. I have a fan. This is what she liked.

Big picture stuff – Brexit is no big deal (who needs an England, GB, UK, EU) or whatever arbitrary enclosure we create to keep people in or out – Small (but more important) picture stuff – Brexit could impact badly on those who already have crap lives.

I feel ashamed and disappointed in my generation. We have raised a flag of intolerance and selfishness that our children will have to live under. We have let the rivalry between two old Etonians (one led us to the cliff and one pushed us over) mess us up. (An “Eton Mess” he says with half-baked wit and more shame)

The next step is to try to ensure that the next government, of whatever geopolitical entity remains, prioritises those that have crap lives and leave those that don’t (all the readers of this blog) to suffer the excruciating torture of more expensive holidays, and the unbounded joys of fewer funny speaking neighbours to drag house prices down and steal those terrific agricultural jobs we are all so keen to take .

Compared to being stuck in a rubber boat in the Mediterranean with a bunch of pirates, being stuck in front of the telly watching Wimbledon while the politicians, bankers, quangos, kings, princes, priests, Etonians, academics, economists, technocrats, bureaucrats get into the most frightful muddle, seems like Nirvana.

Make sure we keep our eye on the ball and that means ensuring that those people, some of whom will have voted for Brexit, don’t become the victims of the dysfunctional elite that have fucked us up ever since the idea of bossing people about first occurred to those imaginative (no denying that) creators of god, jehova, mohammed, thor, zeus, and all those other fine examples of moderation, tolerance and love. Sorry to keep harping on about it but the current trifles really do stem from our absurd belief in the notion of an authority that has all the answers. Some of us believed Cameron, Farage, Corbyn, Johnson or some other expert to be right and duly followed them. There is no ‘right’ nor is there a ‘wrong’ there is only stuff and we need to ensure that the stuff is distributed evenly to all human beings whatever bit of the planet they happen to be standing on. Once everyone has the same amount of stuff, food, shelter, education, basic human rights, then they are free to decide on their own ‘right’ not the ‘right’ imposed by others.

ANARCHY ANARCHY ANARCHY – ra ra ra!!!!!!

Meanwhile. “Vince” our nomadic ginger cat is getting more confident. Arthur managed to get within a couple of metres of him by crawling. I think Vince was so surprised to see a furless, gigantic, cat in shorts, that it stopped him in his tracks. Bobby continues to pee liberally in the house although his atomizer drug therapy should be having some effect. Mitch has yet to really notice Vince and seems completely laid back, so I think he is absorbing the lions share of cat Pheromones due to his spectacular girth and thus catchment area capabilities. Brian our farmer neighbor with the hens has found the fox hole but happily his solutions seems to be that knowledge is power – ie he knows where the fox is so he reasons the fox will no longer venture across this knowledge/ power/ intellectual divide. Hmm?

Our new drone has ended up stuck up a tree after profiting from that part in manual we had not read, ‘when your drone goes out of range it will continue to follow the last instruction it receives’ – thus if last instruction is ‘fly away fast’ on losing contact, so it does, until it meets the Redwoods of Appleton Roebuck and lands with agility and a certain grace on the highest branch. The most fun was had when the neighborhood assembled to watch the spectacle of man and woman, whose species have flown to the moon, fail to invent technology sufficient to dislodge a toy airplane from a tree. There it now sits, its metaphorical tongue stuck out, an arboreal (is that a word for tree based) vault for the filmed highlight from our debacle, including that immortal lost shot of 4 flailing, fading, human-beings shouting recriminations at each other.

Despite weeks of tests and concerns my health is excellent – at least that is how I feel – apparently its not – but I choose to ignore that bit of statistical mumbo jumbo. I am more flexible than I have been for years. I can put my socks on like a sprightly 60 year old, pop in and out the bath like a rust corroded ‘Stanner’ and lift the surprised cat onto my shoulder after only 5 attempts. No I am lying, I am genuinely much, much, fitter.

The family are all flourishing enormously which makes me happy, happy, happy. Maria has Scarborough concert this week that I shall attend. Feels good to be the youngest person in the audience. The only thing is we have to stand for the queen at the end – honestly, really – I guess there might be the odd Brexiteer in the audience seeing as most of them are nearly dead and think standing for the queen is actually a requirement for a Thursday evening concert of light classical and show songs. Still I will do it as the alternative is to standing up for my principals, which I find more objectionable than standing up for the monarch.

I have significantly improved the sound quality and reliability of the phone box project. I now have a pan, tilt, zoom camera in place – admittedly mainly to track Vince.

Sorry  messed up – ignore last message

I was sent this as a link by Jane Baxter. I almost never reproduce stuff but I believe this to be the ‘let’s not Brexit’ Holy  grail and as it looks as if the vote could be close (shudder of utter disbelief and disgust) I would like you all to regard this as compulsory reading.

It’s is from here

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/johnny-rich/35-reasons-to-vote-leave_b_10322446.html 

Some people think it’s completely irrational to want to leave the EU. So, to avoid looking like you’re ignorant or incapable of understanding the issues, here’s a handy list of 30 excuses you can give for your position.

You don’t have to believe them all, just use whichever you feel comfortable with.

Contrary to the expert conclusions of every economic authority of note (OECD, World Bank, Bank of England, IFS, etc, etc, etc), Brexit will not be damaging to the British economy.
Experts don’t always get it right. In fact, because I can think of one example of an expert getting something wrong, I’m going to assume they’re all wrong on the economic consequences of leaving the EU.

I think English literature graduate Michael Gove has a better insight into global economics than the above experts and, in fact, Brexit will magically solve any and all problems in the British economy.

I believe that there aren’t enough jobs to go round for EU immigrants, despite the fact that more workers create a larger economy, creating more jobs as well as a higher tax take.

I believe foreign workers who fill jobs where there are skills shortages like nursing, construction and, erm, premiership football are adding nothing to society.

I believe leaving the EU will remove any moral obligation from the UK to support and welcome desperate people fleeing war and peril in the most troubled areas of the world as this country did before and during WWII.

I believe leaving the EU will make refugees who have already risked everything to get here decide not to bother after all.

I believe China (market size 1.2Bn) will offer just as good trading terms or better to the UK (market size 57Mn) as it does to the EU (market size 500Mn).

I believe the angle of curve of my bananas is something that the EU genuinely legislates on and that this is sufficiently important to me that I am willing to suffer economic hardship in order to protect the right to have access to the bent/straight bananas that I prefer.

I believe the Social Chapter is an affront to my right to oppress others and of those who would seek to oppress me.
I believe this country would wake up the day after leaving the EU and would suddenly find itself bathed in a glorious light of sovereignty, whatever that means. I don’t believe that in practice sovereignty is actually a pretty vague idea that actually can only be negotiated in relation to the wider world as part of international community and that no country gets to do exactly what it likes. Except perhaps North Korea. Yeah. I want to live in North Korea. They got sovereignty.

I believe that, contrary to intelligence experts, the UK would be safer from terrorists without pooling intelligence with other European countries, even though most of the 7/7 bombers were born and raised in, erm, the UK.

I believe we could pool intelligence with other European countries from outside the EU and they would be just as happy to share with us as they are now, but somehow, even though I believe the situation would be the same, that’s still a reason to leave the EU.

I believe I am better represented by the first-past-the-post elected parliamentarians in Westminster than the proportionally representative elected parliamentarians in Brussels and it’s got to be one or the other, rather than both.

I believe the supremacy of European Court of Human Rights (even though it isn’t actually an EU body) diminishes sovereignty in the UK and therefore somehow is less just even though, erm, I can’t think of any occasions when it has overruled British legislation except, oh yes, that thing about prisoners getting the vote, but, well, I suppose actually that might be quite just anyway, but still…

I believe the EU is all a Franco-German conspiracy and the best way of defeating it is to, erm, allow the Germans and French to get on with it.

I believe the EU is run by a bunch of faceless pen-pushing bureaucrats, completely unlike our own fine British civil service which has just exactly as much red tape as is necessary to ensure accountability and to counter corruption, and not a scrap more.

I don’t actually know whether Brussels government is any worse than UK government, but no one’s asking me about leaving the UK, but they have given me a chance to whinge that not everything is perfect in the world, so I’m taking it.

I don’t find Leave’s figure of £350Mn in payments to the EU a week remotely ridiculous, even though it takes no account of either the rebate or payments to the UK.

I believe that instead of spending £350Mn a week to the EU, if we left, we really would be able to spend it on the NHS ‘cause that’s really how economics does work. No, it is.

I believe Britain’s exit from the EU will bring the whole edifice tumbling down and I don’t like anyone else forming an international collaboration if we’re not part of it, even though, erm, I don’t want to be part of it.

I believe holidaying in Europe will be just as easy and no more expensive because they should be happy to have our fine British pounds, even though after Brexit they might be worth a lot less.

I believe that the imports from Europe that of course I will still be able to buy just as easily and just as cheaply will be just as safe and my consumer rights will be protected just as well, even though these are safeguards that are protected by EU legislation.

I’d like to be able to rip off music and videos, like they do in China and Russia, because they don’t have those pesky EU intellectual property controls which stop me stealing from artists whose work I like.

I believe people traffickers who operate outside the law anyway will be just as easy to track without transnational agreements and information sharing.

I believe an isolated UK will have more influence on a global stage because, well, we used to have an Empire you know. Just like, erm, Egypt, Mongolia and the Aztecs.

I’m a Scottish nationalist who wants to stay in Europe, but I hate those Sassenach Tories and this is probably my best way to get another chance to break up the United Kingdom.

I’m an Irish republican who wants Northern Ireland to be reunited with Eire and, erm, I’m not quite sure how that’s going to happen by leaving the EU, but if that Scottish guy thinks it’ll stuff the English, then I’m for it too.

I don’t mind my taxes supporting scroungers hundreds of miles away and with whom I have no connection so long as they’re this side of any sea, but I don’t want them supporting no foreign scroungers whose need might be even greater. After all, I do my bit by giving a fiver to Pudsy most years.

I just want to shove it to Cameron and Osborne.
Michael Gove is my anti-Establishment icon.

I don’t really want to leave the EU, but I want Boris as our next prime minister because he’s got silly hair and says wacky things – a bit like that awfully funny chap they’ve got in the US at the moment, who’s also ever-so keen on Brexit.

I liked it back in the olden days when frogs were frogs and Krauts were krauts.

I believe whatever the Daily Mail and Daily Express tell me to.
I genuinely feel no cultural connection to Abba, Archimedes, Aristotle, Bach, Beethoven, Brie, Cervantes, Chanel, Cicero, Croissant, Da Vinci, Einstein, Euclid, Goethe, the Grimms, Homer, Ibsen, Joyce, Leibniz, Michelangelo, Mozart, Pasta, Plato, Pythagoras, Rousseau, Schiller, Socrates, Tapas, Truffaut, Virgil, Zola or whatever, but on the other hand, I’ve got Morris dancing, Robert Burns, bara lafwr and the Orangemen in my veins.”

On the other hand, if every one of these reasons seems utterly, Trump-lovingly deluded, stop being a bloody idiot and vote #remain.

Follow Johnny Rich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/human_script

My wedding suit trousers fit, much to my surprise. Not only that but my hair has been “restyled” to accommodate Maria’s mowing so I am all set to shine at Avani’s mum and dads tomorrow and ED and Claudia’s wedding on Saturday. ‘Radiant and confident’  -like I have had a full Clinique makeover or got a new brand of toothpaste.

And…

I have a Spring, spring in my stride because I really believe (yes really ally) I have completed all the major technical challenges with the phone box installation as well as some challenges that only became major challenges once I had obsessed long and hard.

Now for a confession. I have been completely unable to concentrate on anything but this project for months now. The various nobbly, nitty, techy bits and pieces that needed doing really got under my skin and into my head. I don’t know how to describe the feeling. Maria gets it with sewing projects. She just has to keep going back and trying to improve what she has done. The improvements are invisible to the rest of the world but to her they are critical. I thought about my nobs when watching telly, driving, eating, and even sleeping. I am afraid I particularly thought about them when talking to other people about dull stuff. That is anything that I am not interested in. Which is almost everything that most people want to talk about. Why can’t there be more people like me in the world! It must have driven everybody mad. It has been a deep deep spell of preoccupation, like other people describe depression, only not sad, just impossible to break free of.

Of course the results are far from spectacular. I liken it to achieving nothing more than baking 6 good currant buns for tea. Something appreciated by just a very few and not appreciated that much. Something very quiet and missable. But utterly joyous none the less. The feeling of freedom to think about other things is just brilliant.

So now I won’t.

Granted some of the tasks were very tricky, not because of any integral programming complexity but because I have been trying to do things that no hardware and software combination has ever been designed to do. The mix of very old technology and new technology has led me to some extremely Heath Robinson solutions and these spaghetti junctions have snowballed into pile-ups further down the road. It’s been like making a bike from bits of a pram, a TV and carpet offcuts.

On the way I have resolved the content issue that has been bugging me for several months, ever since I launched the prototype and got that “something ain’t right” feeling that comes when an audience quite like something – but despite the applause you the author, director, actor don’t. I am now fairly confident I have the content concept ready to match the technical concept. It all comes down to whether or not to use the first person. “Who cares” you may ask. Who cares what a computer voice impersonating Chris would say in a 1937 telephone box. But if you can be bothered, and I suspect most of you cant, it is a very interesting problem. Even “hello” is problematic because the caller may say “hello” back and expect an answer, in this new manifestation this is sometimes possible but even so should an inanimate impersonating an animate say “hello” at all? Would A G Bell’s “ahoy” be more fitting, or funnier, or be somehow subliminally hinting at a historic telephone context, thus routing the piece in some sort of framework. These are very fine judgements that distinguish a piece as either – gently thought provoking, utterly incomprehensible or so comprehensible it’s hackneyed and cheap.. I am aiming for the first. The second is the easiest by far, and the last is where I usually end up. This is the sort of stuff that both keeps me awake and send me to sleep. This is my therapy.

I have not written much of the content yet but that should be the fun bit. I have made one more compromise to accessibility and you will be able to access the content of the installation from any landline by dialling a York number I will release in due course. The experience will be nothing like being in the box but it’s been fun to figure out how to do it. Turned out to be easy peasy. The hardest thing about a project like this is knowing where to start and of course when to stop.