Month: January 2011

21 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

The plan was to drive to Selborne, bus to Alton and walk part of the Hangers Way back to Selborne for 10 miles or so. It was so cold, grey, misty when we were waiting for the bus that we quickly decided not to do a long walk, instead scooting up the 250 year old Zig Zag Path to Selborne Common. It’s always a little spooky up there with the old trees, mosses, twisting parasite plants and enclosed feeling, and the mist only heightened that. Still, it was pleasant to walk for an hour, remembering our very first walk together in Rishikesh, nearly twelve years ago. That time and this, C got a thorn in her foot.

Scenes on Selbourne Common:

Two Tone Tree

Fallen Tree

View from the Zig Zag Path

Misty Selborne Common

Then we piled down the A3 to good old Pompey for some shopping and cinema. The big sports shop is closing down. We picked up a couple of camping mattresses for £7, a foot pump for £3. A solar pedometer for £5 and some camping cutlery for a quid.

Saw a film: The Kings Speech. It’s a good one, especially for anyone who, like me, is afraid of public speaking. Poor guy, muddling along as a mere Lord and next minute he’s the bloody King thanks to his love-stricken brother (who due to odd casting is way to young to be his older brother). The speech therapist comes across well, a healthy dose of irreverence to position and tradition within a kind heart, with real ability to help. The overall feeling is that despite privilege and power, these people are just like the rest of us. I also enjoyed seeing Helena in a non-weirded-out rol.

This was a great scene, where Lionel the therapist has been found out not to be an actual doctor, and due to appearances the King is dismissing him:

King George VI: [Logue is sitting on the coronation throne] Get up! Y-you can’t sit there! GET UP!
Lionel Logue: Why not? It’s a chair.
King George VI: T-that… that is Saint Edward’s chair.
Lionel Logue: People have carved their names on it.
King George VI: L-listen to me… listen to me!
Lionel Logue: Why should I waste my time listening to you?
King George VI: Because I have a voice!
Lionel Logue: …yes, you do.

and this:

Lionel Logue: [as George “Bertie” is lighting up a cigarette] Please don’t do that.
King George VI: I’m sorry?
Lionel Logue: I believe sucking smoke into your lungs will kill you.
King George VI: My physicians say it relaxes the throat.
Lionel Logue: They’re idiots.
King George VI: They’ve all been knighted.
Lionel Logue: Makes it official then.

(See clip below)

But my favourite thing dear old Lionel said was:

“You don’t need to be afraid of the things you were afraid of when you were five years old.” How very true, yet here we are, children in adult’s bodies.

We left Portsmouth at sunset:

20 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Pulled from dreams
Pull my limbs gently
Limber up
Up and at ’em
Computers and web stores
Indian and UK weddings
The main difference?
Bride and groom have never met
Lasagne and rota lunchtime
The best mopper she’s ever seen
No lunchtime walk
No lunchtime snooz
While the bathroom is being done
Thursday is my Friday
And bed before ten

‘Baby swinging’ video and interview

Posted on by Duncan Toms

http://img.mail.ru/r/video2/player_v2.swf?movieSrc=mail/mimozachina/2688/2690 Sorry, I couldn’t get it to embed.

Here’s an interview extract with the spectacularly named Lena Fokina, the woman in the video:

The first thing everybody here thought when they saw your baby-swinging video was “Holy shit!” Then they thought, is it real or fake? So: Is it real? If so, who is the baby?
The child was born in the Black Sea region. Her name is Platona, and she was two weeks old when we took that video. We have a lot of children like her here. They are early readers, singers, talkers, swimmers. You haven’t seen anything like it anywhere!! And there’s swimming with dolphins, scuba diving with them… Come to Dahab!

And are they early readers, talkers, and so on because of baby yoga?
Not only this. It’s just one reason.

What else makes them so talented then?
Love for each other and to one another.

I have two small children and I was, you know, careful with them when they were newborns. So it was hard for me to watch your video. It looks like it has to injure the child. Their hands? The cartilage in the joints? Their brains?
No. It makes the hands stronger.

Did you know that YouTube took the video down because it was in violation of their policy on “shocking and disgusting” content? What is your response to that?
Did they notice that the babies aren’t crying—they’re even laughing—and that this system has been used for over thirty years in Russia and the children are all alive and healthy? If you need more proof, the best thing is to come see us.

Have you heard from people who are upset about the video?
Everybody in Dahab is satisfied. What’s more, a British film crew made a documentary about us, and interviewed the parents.

At the end of your video, it looks like you’re trying to get the two-week-old baby to walk. Is mobility the goal of your baby yoga?
Yes, more mobility, and other goals. First off, more trained skills. Second, more freedom. Third, independence. We learn from nature and teach our offspring to survive. Come to Dahab; we’ll be glad to show our classes and our children. How old are your children?

Four and two years old.
The happiest age!

Da, da. You say you “teach offspring to survive,” but it looks like what you’re doing could kill them. Have you ever had an accident while swinging around a baby?
I don’t recall any. Another objective of our yoga: to teach parents and children to interact so that everything will be in harmony.

How much training do you need to do this baby yoga?
It depends on the sensibility of the child’s mother. Sometimes it only takes one training session.

Do you think mothers who are afraid of this kind of baby yoga just aren’t brave?
Yes, those people have problems of their own. One more objective here is to get the parents’ own activity and movement levels up.

From here.

19 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Having completely not gone to my dentist check-up last week, I rebooked. In my mind, today’s the 12:50 appointment meant 13:50. So there I am outside a closed-for-lunch dentists, feeling sheepish. Then I thought, hey, I get £200 a year dental allowance, why am I going to this cheap-ass NHS dentist who rush me through a check-up and hygiene session in 10 minutes, with a dentist that changes every other year? So I’m looking around for a new one, and will probably go for one in Alresford.

C didn’t pass the driving test. She drove away from a zebra crossing while the pedestrians were still finishing crossing (over in the other lane). So while it wasn’t dangerous, it was breaking the law. The repeat test is in four weeks. But she had a good day for it, after all the rain. We had a deep frost followed by sun and a glowing sunset. Here’s the tower at around 08:20 this morning:

After my failed dental appointment I ate lunch in the Cathedral grounds. Leaning against the wall of an adjacent building, the sun-warmed bricks oozed into my back, while I sunbathed and ate. It felt like spring.

I’m not saying there is nothing in astrology but I don’t think there’s much wisdom in the ready horoscopes you get in papers and online. Perhaps as proof, here’s a graphic of analysis of 4000 ‘scopes. The grey words are common to all, the red words unique to a star sign:

…and this is a horoscope made from the 4000 samples:

…basically, feel-good common sense then.

Took a bath after work and read The Word Magazine. But what I really needed to do was rest my eyes from all the looking looking looking. C has a timer on her Mac for this – I need one for my PC at work to take a rest every hour, and micro-rests every ten minutes.

Meanwhile, back in 1997, on the train to work

Posted on by Duncan Toms

The next morning, a long long time later.

I walk to the front of the train looking for an empty four-seater section but no joy and I sit opposite a tired-looking man in a suit. He has dark putty arcs underneath each eye, cumulative lack of sleep. The same old thoughts going round and round have gotten to him. A girl over the aisle is chatting about work and about Christmas eve. Now she is yawning exaggeratedly. This is part of her conversation. Now she’s talking about golfing presents for Larry. When you are older, perhaps people will associate me purely with my pastimes. Perhaps they already do. But if you have no particular hobbies your present becomes ‘smellies’. Or socks. The Asian lady behind her looks more peaceful with a book, but the chatty girl also has an open book, thumb in the crease. The man she is talking at is now responding with one word answers while she gently massages her left index finger.

At Fareham she quickly moves her bag as lots of commuters board. My pack stays right where it is, on the seat to my left. Most people have a tabloid, necks bent forward, reinforcing their entrenched ideas about the world given by fathers with their tabloids. A woman is looking at the TV pages. No, a complete magazine dedicated to TV. TV Quick. TV, quick! The different channels are highlighted with pastel shades. Another man opposite looks vaguely permanently amused so I assume it is to do with me. Another man in cheap thermal gloves and rectangular glasses, light brown jeans and sensible brown shoes. His hair is thinning and his ears are pink from the morning chill. I realise mine probably are too. His interesting feature is his down jacket, not the shiney space age style of the clubber, but matt orange. The Simpsons stare at me from the TV mag. I once thought they were radioactive, that was why they were yellow.

The train moves on through the urban scenery. On boarding, it was dark hedges and shabby woods, green fields and mist. Now its rows of back-to-backs and NO BALL GAMES housing, brightened by coloured panels fading fast. A red brick church, but they didn’t bother with a tower or spire. The crows have gathered in the corner of the football pitch and then we are back to the terraces of houses, viewed from the back as we move south on Portsea Island.

Meanwhile, back in 1997, on the train home

Posted on by Duncan Toms

We want to escape from suffering as fast and thoroughly as possible. Therefore pleasure is demanded.

On the train after a normal day at work with the telephone, the brokers, the accounts and the incessant chat about shopping and television. Keep out of it. Another train flashes by in the opposing direction. My back is aching slightly and eyes smarting. A man itches his head, concerned for his hairstyle. The train slows for Hilsea, the industrial estate stop. My thoughts turn to my brother who I must phone tonight; since moving I haven’t really kept in touch. Thinking ahead to the two mile walk to home, hoping the skies will be clear to view stars I don’t know the names of. SAVE US TIME. SAVE YOUR TIME. PLEASE SHUT THE DOOR. NO SMOKING. Danger Do not lean out of the window. Do not lean on open door when the train is moving. Everyone does when the train is stopping. Rush, rush, rush. Slow it right down. A girl with clipped back hair at the temples gets off. A woman with lanky hair gets on. I thought she was a teenage boy at first. We move on.

If the door is not properly closed and the train is moving DO NOT attempt to close it – use the emergency alarm. ALARM. Penalty for improper use £50. The train lurches to a stop. People look round, annoyed. I sit quietly, innocently. The Guard arrives with the ticket machine hanging from shoulder, grey coat for the cold, looking like a Russian policeman. Why did you pull the alarm? The door was open and the train was moving and I read the sign. Tuts and sighs and closing of the door. The train moves on. I match the stares from other passengers until one by one they all look away, concerned with their problems or what’s for tea. Hope it’s chips it’s chips. The idea of pulling the alarm chain fades as I realise I too would like to be home.

Deep blue train seats with purple and cyan railway-like patterns zig-zagging. How many arses have sat on them? Grubby black marks where the heads go. Sitting up straight, not wanting my head to touch the filthy grime. Another station. A pretty girl sits down opposite. I don’t talk to her or look at her directly but use the reflection in the dark window. I look at what’s going on in the world of the platform and the reflection of the girl I have named Kim.

Any passengers for Botley please alight from the front six coaches of this train due to the short platform at this station. Am I in the front six? I think so. Otherwise I’ll just jump out into whatever is at the end of the platform. A prickly bush. I loose track of which station is next.

18 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

The wind in the night woke me by opening and clunking the bathroom door. Awake at 0230 after a first and only cycle of sleep. Had a little browsing session. How about this for ultimate rock & roll? Perhaps the least rock performance one can imagine. One robot even smiles at one point:

How about this for a temple? I’ve never seen anything like it.

I’ve been reading on the new Kindle 3 for a few hours in total. Generally I am liking it a lot, comfortable to hold, adjustable font sizes. What I am missing right now is to be able to look at the book cover, something I do when taking a little break from the reading. I also like to be able to check ahead to see how far it is to the end of a chapter, to see if I want to pause now or later, or when deciding whether to start a new chapter. I also don’t like the fact that Kindle files are DRM, so I am going to check out this script to see if I can’t remove the rights. I also want to look into converting them to a non-hardware-specific format. I read that the iPad 2 will have four times the resolution of the current iPad. This makes it more tempting as an ebook reader. But how is it for long reads? I know my laptop screen makes my eyes a little sore after a while.

At work: collecting texts for Ray to edit a new book. In the afternoon as usual working on a transcript, discussions with Brockwood staff in 1976: “Intelligence is perception and action, no ideation.”

Baked potatoes in the over; the room smells delicious. And just as I write ‘delicious’ the timer buzzed, so… spud break!

We received the invite to J & M’s wedding in May. I’m going to be an usher, with J’s brother. The wedding itself is on HMS Warrior at Portsmouth Harbour. This means no confetti, balloons or other corny crap. They used one of C’s images for the invites:

Later, watched more episodes of Everest ER

17 Jan 2010

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Awoke from deep within a dream of a yoga course within a music festival, a warped Kripalu within an even warpier Glastonbury. Feeling sleepy all day, trying to wake up by taking the outdoors cleaning job for our weekly clean at work this morning, breaking boxes for recycling. Heavy rain this morning and tonight. C drove CC and I to the supermarket this eve. CC reminded me of this company http://www.laptoprepairslondon.co.uk/ in London who repaired C’s laptop and a friend’s. So when a student’s Mac notebook failed, we both recommended letting them repair it. But instead of repairing it they switched out some of the components for lesser parts – hard drive, RAM, not sure what else. And then gave it back saying it couldn’t be repaired. So this is a review of Laptop Repairs Fulham: don’t trust them.

Yoga day 17, postures specifically for back strength and flexibility. Work ordering the priority for the audio production project, plus pulling a few transcripts on morning meeting for a school staff member. In the afternoon, researching DVD/TV combis for the Centre, to replace the current VHS combis in the viewing booths. While verifying the transcripts, I often tweet bite size Krishnamurti quotes here.

This evening watched a little of the most stressful show on earth: Grand Designs, and a little Everest ER from 2007. I also saw the trailer to the third Zeitgeist movie, Moving Forward, seemingly focussing on the capitalist system gone too far:

16 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Regular viewers will notice a design of the site. I’ve updated the template after a few years of K2, to the WordPress default Twenty Ten. I recoloured the header blue and the cloud is now… black. This template gives a lot more options such as custom headers. There may be a few more changes I’ll make but this is pretty much how my blog will look this year.

…

I’ve been up Everest several times now. Once with the IMAX crew, once with Jon Krakauer, last night, twice, with Anatoli Boukreev. And today with Nick Heil in Dark Summit. I suppose my fascination will naturally cease at some point, but I’ve been really enjoying the exhilaration. The sheer craziness of ambition and the decision-making, even by expert guides and leaders continues to amaze the more I learn. Factor in the cost of each expedition and the pressure is really on to get as many people to the top as possible. Add the unpredictable weather into the mix and you’ve got high risk of death.

…

A big driving day, one session in the morning and another after lunch. C has her test in three days. She’s improving all the time and handling the unpredictable more competently. I cannot remember much about learning to drive. I remember it being one of the few times my mum and I argued. I remember driving with my older brother and hesitating at a narrow bridge so that someone drove into the back of me. I failed first time with the classic fault of ‘undue hesitancy’. I passed second time. Soon after, ignoring the advice to take it easy, I took mum’s Nova up to Kingsdown Hill and floored it down the long straight Roman road, hitting 100. I got an erection. My driving back then wasn’t safe, getting to town as fast as possible, even with passengers, flying over humpback bridges. And a crash in Bath, overtaking at a junction. Someone turned right into me when I thought he would go left. Nothing serious, a big dent in the rear quarter. I don’t think C will suffer from speed thrill and she is for the most part ultra safe. It’s hard sitting in the passenger seat sometimes, with little or no control over anything.

…

As C is moving to Alresford in early Feb, the town has naturally been on my mind. I enjoyed looking at these old images Here’s one example, of Broad Street:

15 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

BP in the Arctic: There goes the neighbourhood:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12195576

…

Locals borrow every book in a Buckinghamshire library as a campaign against its closure:

The library at Stony Stratford, on the outskirts of Milton Keynes, looks like the aftermath of a crime, its shell-shocked staff presiding over an expanse of emptied shelves. Only a few days ago they held 16,000 volumes.

…

A very good summary of the 2010 wikileaks, grouped by region. Examples:

– A storage facility housing Yemen’s radioactive material was unsecured for up to a week after its lone guard was removed and its surveillance camera was broken, a secret U.S. State Department cable released by WikiLeaks revealed Monday. “Very little now stands between the bad guys and Yemen’s nuclear material,” a Yemeni official said on January 9 in the cable.

– Pope Benedict impeded an investigation into alleged child sex abuse within the Catholic Church, according to a leaked diplomatic cable. Not only did Pope Benedict refuse to allow Vatican officials to testify in an investigation by an Irish commission into alleged child sex abuse by priests, he was also reportedly furious when Vatican officials were called upon in Rome.

– Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC has infiltrated the highest levels of government in Nigeria.

…

Went to Alresford to check out a house share C is interested in. She thinks she’ll take it, come early February. Then a short driving session before lunch. In the afternoon, reading, conversation, yoga.

…

Today’s question is: If you had a time machine that only let you spend one hour in a different time, what date would you go to?

I don’t want to go to any time. To go to now would be the real miracle.