Mind twirling

Perpetual motion has intrigued the minds of many over many years. Something for nothing is what it amounts to thermodynamically. I mention it only as background to two observations from science and apparent real world behaviour.

Cats, they say, always land feet down whenever they fall from a height. I do remember seeing slow motion film of this truism, in which a cat twisted and flicked its body into the position for landing. Some of may know where this is going. The other apparent truism is that a slice of toast, especially, one with jam or marmalade, will always land, when dropped, preservative side down.

Now, what holds my amusement and sets my mind a twirl is what someone said would happen if a slice of such toast was strapped to the back of the cat, jam side up, and the combination dropped from a height. There would simply be no landing. There would be a continuous gravitational struggle between the two items. It would be perpetual motion. I just like to consider this image, which I cannot do without smile.

A recent observation when driving home from Edinburgh has caused a similar mind twirl. A now regular feature of motorways has been the construction of huge electronic notice boards, each known as a matrix. Their laudable purpose is to warn motorists of problems ahead: delays, diversions, lane closures and accidents. Often the information is a little tardy in being up to date, but when the roads are clear and not busy there is a desire to keep the motorists informed and advised.

Thus these expensive road safety feature turns into an electronic nanny, giving vital advice that you had never, ever considered. Most are too tedious to consider; you may have your own favourites for stating the obvious, which is what they tend to do too often.

The phrase that one of these huge, electronic Chinese cookies broadcast which amused me was 'AVOID DISTRACTIONS'. Apart from the obvious - gosh, avoid distractions, how have I got through 40 years of driving without that nugget.

This message to me was the verbal equivalent of the cat with breakfast strapped to its back. The advice is sound, no argument. My mind kept saying that a distraction only becomes such when it succeeds in fulfilling its definition, that is, it distracts you. If it doesn't do this, then it is not a distraction. Thus the notice was futile, concise - yes, but of no use whatsoever.

I will contend that most of these dead time messages are groanworthy, nannyish and a complete waste of resources. The advice 'Avoid Distractions' was, for me a mental distraction, a source of amusement which filled my mind for the next few miles.

If that is their game, why don't they replace their platitudes with a quiz or puzzle for which you could collect clues for from later matrices as you drive down the quieter zones of the motorway.

Or, when motorways are quiet, turn the things off.

A load of bull

Red Bull have made a breakthrough.

I refer not to their sponsorship in motor car racing, nor to their commitment to air races, but to their everyday customers. Red Bull energy drinks are a product that I have used, and continue to use, despite its awful colour and even worse taste, to maintain an artificial alertness when driving.

An espresso coffee, with its concentrated caffeine shot, works as well, but it is not easy to carry an espresso coffee in your car until the point you need it. This is where I find a can of Red Bull scores. It has sheer portability, even within the confines of a car.

The almost daily queuing at a supermarket checkout brings the eye into contact with all sorts of peripheral products that are their for the grabbing hands of children, bored adults and chocolate and chewing gum addicts. Among this display of goodies I have noticed Red Bull Shots, presumably what is in the cans, but in a concentrated shot. It would seem their next step would be have hypo Red Bull, conveniently ready to inject; a kind of hypo for hyper - their slogan is already written. But that is not for now.

What amuses me is the display literature. It is always very useful to have advice and suggestions on the use of various items. I am very familiar with the phrase 'serving suggestion' which is often found on various food products. They are extremely helpful. I had never before imagined serving, say, fish with peas and perhaps a few chips and, shock of shocks, on a plate. These serving suggestions have saved me from having to put food directly on the table, or arranging the food along side accompanying items, rather than in just one big heap. Yes, they can be most useful. So I found this example of Red Bull's product support a peculiar thing.

The immediate advantage to me about their shots is their small size. But where do you keep them? They are quite tiny when next to the cans. But what to do with them? Where can you put them? Red Bull have all the answers. If you need answers. But being a sort of chemical soup - check their website for the pseudo medical enhancement of their stuff - Red Bull offer not suggestions for storage but advice as if they have some scientific background. It is not an expensive sugary pink drink with a legal stimulant, but a quasi medical aid to stress and fatiguing experiences. Advice is quite different to a suggestion, I feel. With a suggestion, you might have some idea your self about what to do with something. With advice, it would seem to me that you are scratching you head, having no idea about what to do and you turn to another authority for help.

And thus we come to Red Bull's advice about where they are to be kept. Step back and read in amazement. Discount your own suggestions and past experience and read carefully the following. Here is Red Bull's advice for keeping their Red Bull Shot:

In your sports bag
In your drawer at work
In your glove box
and, are you ready for the next nugget of advice. OK, to many women this might not be as obvious as it may be to many men,
In your pocket.

Remember, this is advice thought up to help you if you really cannot think what to do with the handy sized Red Bull shot. It was probably brainstormed at a planning meeting.

Well, that's it. No more under your hat, down your sock or tied to string around your neck. Life is now perfect.

I am a bit concerned about the French government who have passed some decision to ban the naqib.

People who cover their faces are significantly, in western culture, a suspicious lot. Cowboys intent on crime, highwaymen, recent IRA terrorists in public, stocking faced criminals all have an identity to hide as they carry out their often evil ways. Perhaps that explains the insecurity of the French which has made them go down that rue.

Clearly, Muslim women are the new baddies. They must have something to hide as Muslims are the perceived heart of all that is evil in the west. Who knows where the next one will be?

Dress codes are important to many sectors of western life. You must comply to belong, from school uniform to the law courts, from the civil service to McDonalds, there is an identifiable dress that holds them together and/or makes them identifiable as to their purpose, whether legal or illegal.

Our clothing badges us all. For corporate good or evil.

But the French have come down against a small minority of women, whose hidden face makes them, the French, uneasy. I can understand their feelings on the subject, but not against the same minority.

There are many people who dress in a certain way who make me uneasy, irrationally – yes, and I would like a ban on those public appearances of dress styles which I find ugly, unnecessary and inconsiderate; three things that I feel that the naqib is certainly not guilty.

Namely:

· Fat men over 40 who wear sleeveless vests, so that their flabby, unfirm, untanned flesh is exposed. They should only be allowed in shops in controlled hours. There presence puts me off shopping for anything edible, especially meat.

· Shaven headed men who are purely a remnant of an age when the shaven head was ‘fashionable’. Or who are facing baldness with artificial baldness on the scale of if you can’t beat it then join it. I know that some men hang on to the hair style of their youth. There are some 70 year old teddy boys out there, but old men with shaved heads look scary. My perception, I know, but enough for them to be banned. They are potentially violent – as in the Mitchell brothers.

· Anyone clearly unfit and overweight who wears sporty gear. I recognise that it is possible to turn out fully dressed for about £10, including shoes, but only in stuff from JJB sports. People should dress according to their true lifestyle. Fit clothes should only be sold to people who can run upstairs to the first floor of the shop. They create a false impression of the state of the nation and themselves. They are not to be trusted.

And those 'trousers' that end half way up the calf. Just bloody stupid in my view.

I know this small list hits the poor and tasteless section of the public and I hate myself for doing this. We perhaps all have lists of what people should and should wear. The French clearly do. Their view might be become ours. I hope not.

The road to liberty is not won with legislation. We have liberty, and the historians will say that it was hard won. I agree this sounds as so much of a platitude, but we are free to dress, as long as we dress, more or less how we like as a result. No Maoist general uniform here thank you, as long as you discount the Talibanesque 17th century of the Puritan Commonwealth. Something however dictates a dress code, however.You can see the effect of Hello magazine on the most ordinary masses of people. The baseball cap has become almost universal across all ages and sexes. I cannot fathom why. And I do really enjoy weraing hats as well. We are not a nation of pure individuals in dress at least.

But it is how that dictation occurs that is of concern. A legal enforcement is frightening if you are on the end of it. I would really hate to have to give up wearing a hat in public if wearing that hat was illegal.

So we should be aware though. If one large group can dictate the dress of another smaller group, or even everyone, then who is to know if your own minority yet happy way of life will not be threatened by another majority who want to determine your appearance? Treasure your flip flops.

However, the dress code police will never be created. Who will say if their uniforms are acceptable?

You wouldn't believe it

An Icelandic volcano has recently created all sorts of problems for air travellers. A period of no flying caused people to be stranded in various parts of the world or delayed in this country.
Of course for those involved it has been a problem and a source of annoyance. But, it has to be said, it also gave some of those travelling to exercise some initiative to get to a destination by other means.

Of course, travel delays are a nuisance to all involved, both travellers and transporters. I am reading about the Grand Tour at the moment. A book, by Jeremy Black, who has researched diaries, journals and accounts of some of those taking part in what may be seen as the first British cases of tourism. This was towards the end of 17th and through the 18th century, a time, for some at least, of immense wealth. Immense wealth and quite lengthy periods of free time to indulge in opening up their worlds to the delights of Europe.

Generally, it tended to be the younger bloods, but whoever did it, I was amused to read that they too were subject to travel delays by natural forces too. Not volcanoes though. Simply the wind, or rather more simply the wind blowing too strongly or simply blowing in the wrong direction.

Consider one unfortunate case. In 1699, one adventurer was hoping to leave Harwich to sail to Holland. He was delayed for two weeks, due to wind blowing the wrong way. On a fourth attempt to sail, they made it, but, on three previous attempts, they had to turn back each time. In those three attempts they were at sea for a total of 72 hours. The first time for 12 hours, the second time for 36 hours and the third time 24 hours. On each occasion, they simply rode at anchor off the coast waiting for the wind to change. And he was of course sea sick - in more than one way. The journey from Dover to Calais should have taken about 6 hours in favourable conditions.

Others, who had sailed for Calais ended up in Dieppe. But worse was one who returning from Holland ended up on the coast of Norway. Amusing stuff from a distance of nearly three hundred years, but it had to be endured nonetheless.

It's like the pay off in the classic 4 Yorkshiremen sketch. "You try telling the young people of today and they won't believe you"

Hare today and here tomorrow...

The brown hare is as tough as they come. Mad? Ascribedly and anthropomorphically, yes, but they are stunning creatures. Not for them, even in our harshest weather, a nest or burrow. Not for them the fattening up for the coming cold and not for them a winter sleep in the cushioning depths of a winter shelter. They simply look in the face of whatever nature brings and tough it out.

Two have spent the last 48 hours down in a form, as their settling places are called, surrounded by the latest couple of inches of snow. We see them regularly in this place and watch them, like fond parents watching their children outside, secretly and not wanting to disturb their world. Surrounded by snow they are effortless to notice, as they crouch or sit still in silence. Towards the end of the afternoon, as darkness takes the colour form the field, they often can be seen grooming themselves.

They must be real hardy types. I mean, its cold out there with temperatures dipping by more than just a few degrees overnight. No wonder the males go mad in Spring. When put to it, they can really motor. Low to the ground they take off in an instant and hit top sprinting speed in two strides. A magnificent sight. Still or streaking, I really admire these creature and have done so for a long time.

Classed as game, they can be hunted. But unlike other game, they have no part of the year with protection and thus are not only fair game but all year round game. Tough and built to withstand all nature can heave their way, their make up did not take account of that most dangerous of mammals, man.

Numbers have dropped dramatically, not directly or massively by any climate irregularities, but by the vagaries in the farming landscape. Like many bird species, hares are susceptible to changes in farming methods and farming madness. Intense cropping and use of chemicals are cited whenever a specie's population declines. This decline is a trend that is reversing due to pressure from conservation groups and farmers being encouraged to be more caring. And rightly so.

This is a noble creature.

Their behaviour is symbolic of stoicism, stubbornness, and calmness in the face of adversity, some of the celebrated characteristics of the English race and thus, the hare should be our symbol.

You have to laugh...

When I was a child, we had winter. Snow fell. It was occasionally deep. As a child, it as fun. As a grown up, I imagine it was like today. Getting about would be difficult and potentially dangerous, only with very fewer cars.

Occasionally, it interfered with sporting events and pools panelist experts had to predict results of matches postponed. I had to scrape off the ice, like many, from the inside of my bedroom window to see out in a morning and, unless someone ie an adult, had got up and lit a fire, you stayed cold.

What thankfully we did not have was TV news. We lived knowing it was cold, knowing that milk may not be delivered - if the delivery failed, you had to walk to the dairy!-and knowing that it was fun for children and hard work for the grown ups. But today? TV journalists leap around like children who have never seen snow and continually tell you how cold it is. They turn up in areas where you wouldn't dream of being - even in benign weather!

We all have TV tales of winter, of snow, of problems doing what we do daily. And we all get on with. Sadly, there are tragedies, as there are all year round, but these TV people are the biggest joke.

It is as if only they are about, only they can experience the weather in all its glory and horror. I find it hootingly amusing to be told that it is absolutely freezing by some TV journalist who appears as high as the temperature is low. They move about the district, like some broadcasting chess game, and, at the same time, warn you how dangerous it may be to travel.
And they are so extra caring that they tell you to take care and, unbelievably, tell you to wrap up well.

After a time, fresh snow loses its initial beauty and turns to mush, trodden down and dirtied by people just getting on with it. Similarly, the TV news follows a similar path. The TV news has now become slushy, and become a tedious and an unnecessary lingering hindrance to normal life.

The only way to deal with this bleak winter spell in broadcasting is to turn it off. But I find its tedious nature and predictability fascinating. I want to devise a TV winter Bingo game, where players score for words broadcast.

But I won't. Spring will be here soon

Who will buy?

Let's face facts. We have three sofas. They're all leather covered and all are comfortable. In fact the one we've had for ten years is just coming into maturity as a piece of furniture. It is generous,warm to sit on and will last, accidents apart, for a life time. In addition, its design is quite classical and thus timeless, being of the design that came out of the 1920s/1930s - the kind of sofa I imagine being on the Queen Mary, or in smart hotels of that time. And the colour.... Its toffee coloured with simple cream piping.

As furniture goes, a good three piece should last a while and that is my belief that I may not need to buy another - ever. It may be passed down to another generation, which used to happen I think.
So I am amused by all the current advertising on television and indeed in the magazines for sofas and for sofas at remarkably inexpensive and easily managed prices.

They are clearly targetting youngish people, people who might find it a bit of an effort to stump up the cash for such items, or those who, as fickle fashion followers, may wish to re-define their lifestyle quite frequently with a new look in furniture. Whatever the route, the furniture ads are in your face when you tune in to TV.

Once upon a seasonal TV sales pitch, it was holidays. Companies strove for your two week attention at resorts around the UK and later abroad, especially the holiday camps. The very organ of information of TV stuff, the Radio Times was thickened by the extra pages carrying the benefits of a week in Clacton or Dunoon. These pages were stapled annoyingly between Christmas day's and Boxing day's schedules. Ripping them out resulted in the total disintegration of the magazine.

Later came the part works magazines which gave subscribers the opportunity to buy, over 48 months, bits and bobs needed to build the Santa Maria or a James Bond car. Each magazine came with the next part and in two years, after a layout of about £400 you had a model to be proud of. Or could be, if they all turned up.

But now the big push is sofas. So having three already, they are neither tempting or exciting. I'll simply stretch out and enjoy the ones I have already.