RUNNING - A GOOD TIME TO THINK

As predicted, both the Daily Express and the Daily Mail have today chosen headlines along the lines of ‘Driver fined for eating apple’. How about ‘Driver not fined for killing person’? Surely that’s a little more newsworthy?

Running on the treadmill at lunchtime, I started to reflect on negative emotion/s and how awful they are/how destructive they can be: disappointment; rage; murderous jealousy; etc. Never welcome and never pleasant. When you are in the grip of it though, acute embarrassment is high on the list of ones to avoid. It sounds mild - like a minor inconvenience, but when it has you, it’s appalling.

INSOMNIA

One of my favourite novels is a glorious obscurity. No-one has ever heard of it. It was a triumphant find in a tiny public library. Written in the '80s by a Frenchwoman, the action concerns a young woman who starts overeating and then decides to continue overeating until she dies. So it’s a form of suicide. Her heart eventually buckles under her own weight but it's the dying that's important, not the death itself.

It might sound a bit like anorexia in reverse, but anorexics generally do not want to die (they just want to be thin). This, on the other hand, is a calculated act. With a lack of self-pity, she only eats sweet/sickly/greasy/ food, in ever-increasing quantities. Naturally, the woman becomes very obese. Learning to deal with others' reactions to her is another part of the process and this is a major theme – the discrepancy between other people’s assumption that she lacks self control, and her own self control in continuing to consume mountains of food.

So it’s not the happiest book. But it’s exceptionally vivid and well-written.

A line that I’ve never forgotten is this. I’m not sure where in the book it comes, but I think it is a thought that she has at the end, lying down in her room while she is close to death. She is looking forward to being dead and to the release it will bring her, but then this nightmarish scenario suddently occurs to her: “And what if death were merely eternal insomnia in the heart of a slumbering city?”

I think that’s such a great line! I remembered it last night because I couldn’t sleep while the city (when you are sleepless it feels like the whole world) slumbered on. The novel is called 'Sweet Death' and it is by Claude Tardac.

LESSONS LEARNT THIS WEEK:

While experience is an enormous help, success as a secondary-school teacher largely depends on whether you are at an okay school.

Disregarding all other considerations and from a purely scientific point of view, finding a sexually compatible partner is a simple matter of finding someone with dissimilar body odour (ie, someone with a contrasting immune system).

To make a successful shepherd’s pie it is necessary to include Oxtail Soup amongst the ingredients.

It is one calendar month since the passing of the shortest day. The afternoons are noticeably lighter. I preferred pitch darkness.

GLOBAL DIMMING

The crux of this BBC Horizon show was this: less sunshine is reaching the surface of the earth. Two simple tests have shown this to be a fact. I’ve forgotten the first one, but the second was a straightforward Water Evaporating From A Saucepan experiment, conducted in Australia over decades.

Not surprisingly, the reason for this is pollution and the way it has changed the nature of clouds. Moist air condenses around a tiny particle (aerosol). Formerly, this would be a speck of pollen or sea salt. Now, though, it tends to be a piece of soot, ash or sulphur. Man-made particles are smaller and more numerous than naturally occurring ones, which means ‘dirty air’ contains many more microscopic surfaces onto which moisture can condense. Thus, there are more water droplets in polluted clouds than in non-polluted clouds, and these droplets are smaller than they would normally be.

The greater surface area of the more numerous yet smaller raindrops means more light is reflected back out to space. The photons (and heat) of the sun are not able to penetrate. The polluted clouds behave like giant mirrors. This is what caused the Ethiopian drought and famine. The summer rains did not arrive in northern parts of Africa, because the oceans were cooler than they should have been. Hence, clouds did not bubble up over the oceans (which would then have formed seasonal rain belts).

Only trouble is, reducing these sunshine-blocking particles won’t resolve climatic problems. Here’s why. In the aftermath of September 11th, all commercial aircraft in the US were grounded for three days. This meant no jet emissions. Scientists realised that during this three day period, temperatures were colder at night and hotter by day. There was a much greater diurnal range of temperature. Removing only one environmental pollutant had a massive effect. Removing many such environmental pollutants would probably cause a massive increase in global warming. Reducing global dimming (minimising clouds that behave like mirrors) would heat up the surface of the earth considerably. In fact, it’s already happening. In the West, we have catalytic converters, etc which cut down particle pollution, but in 2003 we had the hottest summer on record.

It seems that we have underestimated the rate of climatic change. Greenland’s icecaps are likely to melt in our lifetime, raising sea levels by eight metres, which will be the real beginning of the end.

It was heartening that this show was broadcast during the same week that Airbus released the launch of its new, extra capacity Very Big Plane. So maybe aircraft pollution will maintain a balance and save us after all.

LAMPPOST

When there's a strong wind, lampposts often make an obvious twanging noise. It's quite loud, too. At least, you can hear it from the other side of the road. It sounds a lot like an interior cable hitting the hollow tube of the post, and it is always the same, repetitive note at regular intervals. If lampposts stopped producing this noise, I would miss it.

EXCESS

Very quickly: it's well-known that the number of synonyms in a given vernacular are revealing of that nation/culture's hang-ups. I heard on the radio the other day that this is relevant to the UK right now, regarding our "binge drinking" culture. The article said (without giving a list) that we have an inordinate number of words to describe the state of being intoxicated. Hmm. I considered this for about half a second and immediately realised they were onto something. Here are the ones I can think of:

mullered
trolleyed
hammered
caned
walloped
pissed
paralytic
wasted
brained

But there must be more, right? I don't think "drunk" counts. It's too mild.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR

I nearly began by writing “Every morning”. Which would be a lie, so I’ll start again. On most mornings I cycle to work. The distance is 6.1 miles exactly. If I feel particularly exhausted or unwell I take the Northern Line, but my view is that 6 miles in each direction really shouldn’t challenge a person of my age.

At Southwark Bridge Road I feel happy because I know I’m nearly at the end of my journey. “Happy”, relatively speaking (given that I am about to spend 8½ hours at an office job). As I leave the depressing surrounds of Elephant & Castle behind me and head up!-up!-up! the last stretch of Southwark Bridge Road (it looks like a gentle slope but is deceptively steep) I come to Southwark Bridge itself. It’s the only pleasant part of a journey that takes me along some very busy roads and run-down areas in South London. To my right – further East – I can see Tower Bridge, and, early on a January morning, the newly risen sun poking my eyes out and throwing long shadows across the width of the road. To my left, heading West, the Tate Modern is very close and in the distance, recognisable landmarks (such a Centre Point) are obvious. Going to work or heading home, crossing the bridge is the best part of a fairly uninspiring route.

One thing that takes some getting used to, though, is the sight of the Millennium Bridge. This is the famously wobbly bridge whose designers had to go back to the proverbial drawing board. It is the very next bridge to my left (West) and it is a footbridge rather than a bridge equipped for transport. Further West of this we have Blackfriars Bridge, of which there are two – one is a regular road connected up to other roads, the other one only moves trains, directly into Blackfriars Station. Seen from my perspective on Southwark Bridge, pedestrians walking over the Millennium Bridge take on the appearance of giants. The Millennium Bridge is narrow. The distance between me (observing), the pedestrians (walking), and – furthest away – Blackfriars Bridge, where trains and cars are moving, creates a strange effect whereby the more substantial Blackfriars Bridge seems to absorb the skinnier Millennium Bridge, rendering it invisible. Its pedestrians seem to be walking over the much more distant bridge, yet the people are impossibly tall and it is disorientating. It is an illusory sight created by the bridges being somehow in line. The brain has to instruct the eye how to perceive. It has ceased to surprise or puzzle me now though, which is a shame.

RECEIVER OF WRECKS

The government has a department called ‘Receiver of Wrecks’ based in Southampton, which is part of The Maritime and Coastguard Agency. Anything found washed up on a beach should be reported to the Receiver of Wrecks, which decides whether to allow “finders keepers” and generally makes a judgement on how best to deal with the item/s.

I was unaware of this two weeks ago. I know now, because a 15ft Minke Whale was washed up on a beach near my mother’s house. Apparently, the environmental health department believe the whale may have been injured by shipping. Its presence was notified to the RoW and a decision was made to cover the decomposing whale carcass in tarpaulin and leave it to rot.

The whale was not found in on a straight stretch of coastline, nor was it washed up in a bay. Nope, it was found in a cove. Coves being coves, the whale was difficult to recover: it was impossible to transport lifting gear to the site, and the tide failed to shift the mammal. So there it is – a decomposing whale.

The country is much better than metropolitan life. But maybe that’s just because I don’t live there.

COBBLERS OF LOAD A ?

I love these collective nouns. As you will see if you read through, some are more established than others.

A murder of crows
A convocation of eagles
A cast of falcons
A charm of finches
A colony of gulls
A band of jays
A desert of lapwings
A watch of nightingales
A cloud of seafowl
A host of sparrows
A flock of swifts
A wake of vultures
A pack of dogs
A band of gorillas
A pod of dolphins
A farrow of piglets
A culture of bacteria
A flight of butterflies
A plague of locusts
A mess of iguanas
A knot of toads
A nest of vipers
A faculty of academics
A team of athletes
A bevy of beauties
A shuffle of bureaucrats
A congregation of churchgoers
A troupe of dancers
A staff of employees
A conjugation of grammarians
A gang of hoodlums
A bench of judges
An audience of listeners
A ring of paedophiles
A crowd of people
A crew of sailors
A choir of singers
A class of students
A den of thieves
A coven of witches
A congregation of worshippers
A host of angels
A belt of asteroids
A battery of tests
An armoury of missiles
A raft of measures
A bunch of bananas
A library of books
A pack of cards
A network of computers
A cache of jewels
A fleet of lorries
A range of mountains
A string of pearls
An anthology of poems
A clump of reeds
A fleet of ships
A flight of stairs
A constellation of stars
A chain of islands
An agenda of tasks
A balance of accountants
A load of cobblers
An unease of compromises
A brace of dentists
A grid of electricians
A volume of water
A wealth of information
A number of mathematicians
A horde of misers
An annoyance of neighbours
A body of pathologists
A ponder of philosophers
A clique of photographers
A nucleus of physicists
A breakdown of plans
A cancellation of trains
A complex of psychologists
A portfolio of stockbrokers
A flight of yesterdays
A promise of tomorrows
A bunch of things
An optimism of youth

TREADING THE BOARDS

Having a bit of an eye for language, I've noticed that the word 'actress' is in declining use. Not only by writers/editors/journos (ie, the press) but even when actresses themselves speak or are quoted. 'Actor' seems to be favoured. The equivalent isn't true of other professions (waiter/waitress) but then there are jobs where there is only one form (who ever heard of a 'doctress'?). Is there such a thing as a 'bus conductress'? Blah, blah, i could go on.

Presumably (I'm guessing) 'actress' is being dropped for being sexist. Someone shudda told me.........

NATURE / AC GRAYLING

Here is an annotated edition of AC Grayling's vignette on Nature. Pleased to note that he brings the essay to a close by citing Turgenev.

Fragile human life often finds itself confronting nature's larger gestures - earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, pestilences and plauges. Nevertheless, we choose to assume that, generally speaking, nature's ordered ways are benign. The power of natural disasters is a reminder that they are not.

Nature is as unyielding in defending itself as it is in exploding our expectations. A man is frail when a mountain falls on him, but give him the slimmest chance of survival - for example, a fissure to crawl into as an escape from the engulfing rock - and he will survive. This illustrates the tenacity of life, which Schopenhauer described as an instance of the general metaphysical will underlying all things - the continual struggle for continuance. Schopenhauer thought that the will to exist is a bad thing, because it pointlessly perpetuates suffering. But others are not so pessimistic, and redescribe nature's neutrality as even-handedness. 'Why should we fear to be crushed by savage elements', Emerson asked, 'we who are made up of the same elements?'.

People who enjoy opportunities for reflection - for which leisure is a condition, and a condition for leisure, in turn, is wealth, or at least freedom from necessity - tend to occupy areas of the world with temperate climates, fertile soil, and low frequencies of natural disasters. For them, natures is an amenity and an enjoyment: blossom-filled woods in Spring; sparkling snows at Christmas are not matters of life and death, but aesthetic delights. Nature in these guises elicits poems and songs, watercolour paintings and afternoon walks. No one writes an ode to a tsunami, or strolls in a storm - though he might, like Turner, paint one. It was a Romantic affectation to seek out the sublime and awful in nature; poets took pains to be overwhelmed by Alpine chasms and brooding forests. Such is the mental mark of urban civilisation. Rural civilisation is never so impressed. The shepherds who graze their sheep in Alpine chasms find them much less amazing than a city street. For them, nature - earthquakes and all - is merely natural, neither especially beautiful nor especially significant.

To view nature aesthetically, and even romantically, is better then to view it with such workaday indifference, because then it retains its power to refresh the town-wearied spirit which prompted Wordsworth to complain 'Getting and spending we lay waste to our powers/Too little we see in nature that is ours'. But the romance requires a tincture of realism to take account of the truth in Turgenev's observation that 'Nature cares nothing for our human logic, she has her own which we do not acknowlege until we are crushed under her wheel'.

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Agreed that there is a price to be paid for urban civilisation ("such is the mental mark of.."). But he's clearly writing from an urban/monied point of view when he writes "To view nature aesthetically..is better..."
Of course it is, it's bleedin' obvious that this is better - and necessary - if you live in a city and have the "leisure" and "weath" to do so. I'm not sure whether I rate AC Grayling. These essays were published weekly in the Saturday Guardian (where else?) before they were collected in a book which I picked up recently for £1.99.
Also, I don't understand the point made by Emerson which he quotes. Can it really be said that humantiy "is made up of the same savage elements" (presumably fire/earth/water/air??) which are so devastating in nature?

AC Grayling. A bit rubbish? Overrated? A publishing phenomenon first and foremost? Or is it just me?