The Dice Man

Some random thoughts on re-reading Luke Rhinehart's book after forty years.

• Like Stranger in a Strange Land and most of Philip K. Dick's output, this has a very sixties view of women, their sexual inclinations and proclivities. Also far from the truth.
• The dice philosophy subverts all social relationships. You couldn't run any complex enterprise that way. I think George Cockcroft knows this.
• The book was much banned. I am still not sure you would permit your wife or servants to read it.

The die made me do it

HT Adrian for parking this literary IED in our midst.

The Painter at Work

I mentioned in yesterday's post that Clare was painting the path outside the back door in an exhilaratingly scarlet. This morning she applied the final coat - so if you want your house-painting done by an artist in her nightie just let me know!

Notice the professionalism of the new back step!

Mozzie attack

Hear that whine? You tell yourself it's the boiler, or maybe a motorbike making its late way home this one o'clock in the morning. Except ... despite your dreamy state, you know in truth that you have company.

A mozzie looms: in the last second of its approach the whine spikes to a crescendo and by reflex your hand shoots out to flail the air. Doubly pointless - the mozzie is unfazed; moreover it treats the act itself as prey-confirmation. In any case a mozzie never eats your head off, ankles are a favourite and you'll never hear or feel it feeding down there.

It's so hot that it's impossible to keep the windows shut; impossible to keep the duvet on. The hours go by, whines recur at intervals, the duvet flaps on and off like a slow-flying bird. At 2 am I abandon the room to Clare, who is oblivious. Judging by the increased fly-by frequency, we seem to have acquired a flock (right collective noun? A swarm?) of the wretched creatures.

I retire to the back bedroom, close the window and door, lie on the bed with the duvet thrown off, listen sleepily to the boiler hum, listen again ... the light goes on and I see a tandem flight at the top of the wall. One is swatted in short order, the second eludes all contact, drifting in and out of view like erratic, wilful dust. Eventually I fall asleep: this morning I am bitten - around the ankle.

On our way back from the bird sanctuary at Ham Loop near Glastonbury today, we bought some RAID at Tescos. Tonight will be different, little guys.

The Tor from Ham Loop

A quick update on artisan work

1. My newly-constructed back step is complete and dry; Clare is currently painting the path around it with a spectacularly red masonry paint.

2. My attempts to stop the sporadic leakage of water from one of the toilet cisterns has been a partial success. I removed the plug/washer assembly from the bottom of the cistern (why is a hole there at all? What possible use is it?), cleaned and smoothed the entire area inside and out, checked the washers - no sign of wear, and replaced all screwing it up tight. Result? It still leaks briefly after the flush has been pulled. Why? No idea.

We'll live with it.

Mystic River

In Mystic River the local hoodlum is in for questioning. The sergeant says that he's clearly done time - you can tell from the tension in his shoulders.

The detective remonstrates: "He's just heard that his daughter has been murdered." The sergeant replies: "That you feel in the pit of your stomach; the shoulders - he's done time."

Our own stomachs have been assaulted by the realisation that our washing machine has packed up. Much random pushing of buttons finally got the door open: sludgy water still lies inside and the clothes are disgusting. We await the views of a repairman re: fix or replace.

After a morning cementing slabs outside the back door, I really expected a more rewarding afternoon. Clare, after a morning sanding window sills, likewise.

Fighters over Weston-super-Mare

The second summer day here of a predicted four: temperatures were in the mid-twenties and there was not a cloud in the sky. Clare and myself took my mother to what we believed would be a pristine Weston-super-Mare to enjoy the sun, sea and sand. Approximately 7,000 other people had the same idea as the beach panorama illustrates.

The crowded beach at Weston today

The water was receding on an ebbing tide making paddling impossible: kinda irrelevant, as newspapers had reported that the water was contaminated with sewage. Alternative entertainment was provided from the air as a couple of Spitfires in their D-Day colours zoomed over the beach and did tricks - you can just see them in the picture below out at sea.

WW2 Fighters over the sea

After three hours watching the good people of Bristol showing far too much of their reddened, spherical bodies we decided to move on. I should mention that the two women I had brought with me were the most covered on the beach. They could not have exposed less flesh to the sun's eager ministrations if they had been zealous adherents to the third Abrahamic religion.

Thankfully, we were soon basking in the cool air of our neighbourhood Waitrose, that secular temple of middle-class modernity.

The steps before they're cemented

I might have mentioned that Clare is looking at me with unusual (even unheard of) adoration as I show off my artisan skills by building a step for the cat out of his cat-flap in the back door.

I pointed out to her that (a) I am a very poor artisan who had to look up the difference between cement and mortar, and (b) my intellectual achievements are to my manual skills as the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai is to a crème caramel. Yet this compelling argument counts for naught with the big eyes. Women - I will never understand them. But I do recall she is rather fond of the cat ...

Talking during ...

The Sunday Times had a front page science story about how a man's cerebral cortex shuts down during the act of sex. It's like they become this great sensual, passionate, carnal animal ... or so I like to think.

Women not so much.

So there you are girls. Try to talk to us in the throes and you'll either get an ignorant grunt, or the sand will hit the gear-box and the machine will stop in its tracks.

Sounds no-win to me.

How popular is this blog?

At first sight it doesn't do too badly. Usually in excess of 70 views per day during the week. But look more closely: almost all of those people are looking at one post, which describes a UK Government security accreditation standard. My article is one of the few "out there" which explains how to go about getting accredited.

Subtract that one article and there's a smattering of hits on some articles I wrote on Myers-Briggs personality type theory and some hits on beauty-spot posts such as National Trust sites we've visited and Weston-super-Mare (sic).

The blogs I look at are aggregation/tutorial sites in arcane areas which interest me such as theoretical physics, economics and politics, genetics, science-fiction, etc. The people writing these blogs occupy positions where they know a lot more about what's going on and what's hot than I do.

So where's the expertise I have which is world-class and best-in-class? Doesn't exist, sadly. When I was working full time in the corporate world on public telecom networks and their architecture/design I could have put together a (maybe anonymous) technical blog. But I didn't.

So bottom line: unless you are a world-class practitioner plugged into the relevant community, it's unlikely that anything you write is going to have a truly mass appeal, even in a niche.

None of this should be surprising: I have just described the usual fate of all would-be authors.

The Birthday Girl in video

Three videos of Clare opening her presents - best viewed in full-screen mode.The first box to be ripped to pieces is from Adrian over in Canada. Amazon worked its magic.

Clare opens Adrian's presents

Balancing precariously on a ladder I attached the bird box to a tree in the back garden this morning, and here it is - a show-home awaiting its first occupant.

The Alpine Bird Box in situ

Next was my present to Clare which is ideally suited to spying on the bird family in their Alpine nest box.

Lightweight Binoculars

Finally, but by no means least it was Alex's box. This is something which has been on Clare's mind a long time and she's delighted.

Alex's present

Videos best seen in full-screen mode.

Le Tour

Nice as it is to have a British yellow jersey and number two, I've been reflecting as to why the race has settled into something rather too tame and bland.

1. Wiggins and Frome are just too good for everyone else.

2. The race designers have screwed up: the stages structure is not incentivising head-to-head combat amongst the race leaders.

3. The race is now too clean. Absent the superhuman superpowers which the drugs enabled, we've been reduced to duelling between mere mortals.

OT: apparently dental braces used by top athletes are (or were) an infallible sign of the illicit use of human growth hormone. Google it.

Your Sister's Sister (film)

We saw said romcom this afternoon in a cinema initially completely empty. Three women then arrived as the feature started and we were led to a cabin in the woods where Jack, Iris and her sister Hannah worked out their angst.

It's a slight film with an implausible, almost Shakespearean plot involving Iris (Emily Blunt doing her Kate Middleton impression) with her pining for 'best-friend' Jack while he is being manoeuvred into a sperm donation for baby-hungry Hannah (the square-jawed vegan lesbian sister). All boxes are ticked en route and the finale presents a very self-satisfied, smug and weepy love triangle.

Verdict: claustrophobic from Clare and girly from me.