The universe is not required to be in harmony with human ambition.

... but sometimes it is anyway.

Just when I think that all TV is nothing but shit something like A for Andromeda comes along and blows me away with such clever beauty and good old fashioned sci-fi-cold-war-paranoia-human-spirit-triumphs-ness that I can’t think of anything to say.

So I am not.

But I am in geek mode and today I read biggest tech story of all time – but it wasn’t in any news papers, it wasn’t on the TV - in fact hardly anyone noticed it. It was in the New Scientist – the voice of the scientific community.

Some nerd reckons he has worked out a way to build a quantum computer. He reckons it will take about 10 years to perfect. And as soon as anyone does anything you know there will be some handy Chinese to mass produce and sell it cheap.

Quantum computing would be the biggest revolution in computing since the silicone chip if not more so. They could hypothetically be a million or so more times faster than the quickest super computer today. They can get the results from programmes they haven’t actually run! How mind blowing is that.

Some people explain quantum mechanics in terms of multiple universes. Like Schrödinger’s Cat - there was one universe where the cat was alive and one where it was not. You only find out which one you are in when you open the box.

To continue the metaphor quantum computers run in multiple universes simultaneously hence giving unbelievable performance.

Of course this multi-universe processing power will be mostly used up running office 2015 which will probably do about the same thing as office 98 but that still leaves a lot left to run a higher evolved super intelligent AI that will cure the world of all its ills.

Before you cash in your retirement fund because in 2050 robots will be doing all the hard work and we will all be living on the moon in huge pleasure domes where every fantasy will be fulfilled and taking drugs that will make everyone young and beautiful forever remember:

a) They said we would all be doing that in the year 2000 in 1950
b) Last month the New Scientist was saying that either aliens had landed or it was raining bats blood – they weren’t quite sure which.
c) Any higher evolved super intelligent AI will have its own sinister agenda - like correcting your documents when you didn't ask it to.

Regardless the future is here... well around the corner.

Drought

South East of England is running out of water. How this is quite possible I am not sure as it seems to me that it rains quite a lot and we live on a small island surrounded by the fucking stuff, but still somehow it has all gone.

Hose pipe bans are in force and the option of communal street taps like we are some third world desert country has not been ruled out for the summer.

Now I would consider a drought to include:

1. No rain.
2. No really, like none at all for a really really long time.
3. Still no rain.
5. A solitary cloud hopefully watched slowly crossing the vast expanse of blue sky that fails to produce any rain.
6. Sod all rain.
7. Cows with thick swollen tongues nibbling at tuffs of yellow tinder dry grass.
8. No rain.
9. Bleached animal bones on a dry and cracked earth.
10. No rain.
11. Death stalking the land.

I would say someone saying we are in the middle of the most terrible drought ever whilst it is pissing down with rain outside has a looser definition of the word than me. But apparently we are as I found out listening to an interview with a spokesman from Thames Water on the radio

He had clearly had some media training but luckily I have a de-public-relations-alator and this is what came out when I parsed the interview:

Interviewer: “You are imposing a hose pipe ban in the South East. Why is that?”
Thames Water Spokesman: “We are in the middle of a terrible, terrible drought but if we all pull together we might get through it.”
Interviewer: “Drought? It is raining outside!”
Spokesman: “Oh yeah - look at that! But no, that is the wrong kind of rain. It needs to really piss down for months to make up for the fact that it hasn’t rained as much as it normally does for the last few months. “
Interviewer: “Isn’t the real problem the fact that you lose a 1/3 of the water out of leaking and burst pipes?”
Spokesman: “Heh… yeah!”
Interviewer: “Why don’t you just fix them?”
Spokesman: “Yeah I suppose we could but – you know – it costs money, can’t find the staff these days, the pipes were built by the Victorians and we have lost the map so we don’t know where they are - stuff like that!”
Interviewer: “It costs money!! Thames Water made record profits last year!”
Spokesman: “Listen, I am just making up excuses – the real reason is we can’t be bothered. Since privatisation Thames Water is the sole water provider so we can do what the fuck we want and charge what we like. You is all our bitches!”

So there have it - no water for the South East which has slightly incensed middle England because they like washing their cars on Sunday afternoon and as for their gardens – well you really don’t want to fuck with them.

Actually I don’t really give a toss because I don’t have a car to wash and my garden contains: some wet patio, some wet mud, a wet tree, a wet plastic chair, a wet cat looking forlornly in the window, my wet bike I was going to fix up this weekend as am I going to start cycling to work but I am not now because it is pissing down with rain.

Ostara

The pagan festival of the zodiac new year - when the earth goddess awakes from her long slumber reborn a young fresh faced virgin dressed in light green or is it white - can't remember. Anyway, the horned one seeks her, hunts her for.. you know {wink, wink}

It is a time of magic and fertility, of lust and love and life. A time of energy and excitement. The magic is strong but perfectly balanced. A time for new beginnings and new possibilities. Of baby chicks and bunny rabbits.

Yesterday a cruel north east wind blew the misery out the remains of the old year but today awoke a new with a warm young sun.

The budding trees know it - as do the birds sweetly singing in their branches - chirping to her glory and beauty. You can feel it in the air.

It is the time of the Ram.

So... careful out there kids and remember the rubbers.

Painting

The past can consume us, it can devour us, it can drink us up and get drunk, lose ourselves down the back of the sofa with the fluff and a 5p coin.

But it is us. Every moment - every tick of the clock, every click of a key opening a lock, every clack of feet walking down a street. These moments make us who we are. The things we’ve seen, the people we have been, the jobs done and loves lost. A half finished painting slowly being etched out across the fabric of time by the thin sharp point of now.

Most of it will be hardly noticed – the casual throw of the coat across the chair will be forgotten even by us but it will still be there. A unique moment drawn forever as reality.

One day it will be finished – static and constant, never changing as eternity simply fails to end.

But until then I am not even half done and the white canvass stretches ahead...

Can’t think of a punch line though.

Emily

I met her when I was 14 and she was 15 on a school trip to France to see the chateaux of the Loire valley. I went to an all boys grammar school but school trips were shared with the all girl catholic school in the same town.

They used share them with the non domination girls school but our teachers decided that although it was important for our personal development for us to occasional meet members of the opposite sex it was probably safer under the beady eyes of catholic nuns.

One afternoon my friend Nick told me he had a plan and I was to follow him when he made his move. Nick had a crush on a girl called Fran but needed my help because she was always hanging around with her best friend Emily. During a tour of a chateau the 4 of us sneaked off the back and went and sat by a fountain glittering in the sunshine set in the beautiful gardens that led up to the chateau.

Emily wore a white linen dress that you could just about see through if she stood in front of the sun. Something she seemed to do a lot. She had short spiky blond hair, a big smile and an infectious giggle.

I was memorized. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her

The other 3 were all a year older than me and talked about things that sounded very grown up like smoking and drinking and drugs and parties and boyfriends and girlfriends.

But I was too spell bound to say anything. I was stuck dumb.

Our little escapade ended after an hour or so when we saw an angry nun walking towards us along a gravel and perfectly manicured hedge edged path.

On the way back to England Nick told me Emily really liked me which I found hard to understand because I only said about 3 things to her.

On the cross channel ferry she came over to me and started kissing me. We didn’t stop until we got to Dover. A steward came over and told that if we didn’t stop we would end up going back to France which seemed fine to me. She was only the third girl I had ever kissed.

I used to visit her in the big rambling farm house were she lived out in the country with her hippy mother and economist father.

Emily and I used to feed the few goats and ducks they kept. She had names for all of them.

We went for long walks in the rolling Wiltshire countryside where she picked flowers and told me made up stories about the goats and ducks.

She said when she grew up she wanted be an artist.

We used to find fields of long grass to sit in and kiss each other. We kissed a lot. We drunk cheap cider and kissed in the long grass.

When I came to stay her mother used to set up a bed for in me in their huge converted barn living room, kept warm by a raging fire.

Emily used to sneak down in the night and we engaged in, what my sex education teacher romantically described as, mutual masturbation, as firelight flicked across our young bodies.

We went out for about 18 months until her father got a job in the US.

Just before she left we lost our virginity together. It was in the spare room of a friend’s parent’s house in the new forest. He was having a party. We did it to the muffled sound of music and laughter below.

I hurt her. I made her bleed. I made her cry.

Afterwards she sat out of the window on the sill, smoking a cigarette watching the moon set over the trees, tears silently rolling down her cheek.

I wanted to say sorry. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to make it better. But I couldn’t think of anything to say. So I just lay there and watched her moonlit silhouette.

We didn’t have sex again.

On the day she left I saved up and bought her a thin silver chain necklace - it made her cry. I seemed to do that a lot – make her cry… or laugh – sometimes both together.

She stayed at my house the night before she left. I watched her walk away from my front door. I wanted to cry. I wanted to call out. But I didn’t.

I met her again 4 years later at a party in London. We ended up going back to her place where she painted my face with a hundred small paw prints as if a tiny cat had walked all over my head.

“What shall I say happened to me?” I asked.
“Say it happened as you dreamt about it.”

We had sex for the second time. She was no longer the 16 year old virgin but a 20 year old rampant sex bomb woman.

I went to see her at her parent’s new place in South Wales for a long weekend over Guy Fawkes’ night. We sat up the hill slightly away from the bonfire, drinking mulled wine, talking and watching the fireworks crisscross the star studded night sky.

We got stoned and listened to Bob Dylan. She showed a piece of wood she found.

“Wow – it looks like a dragon’s head” I said
“It looks like a lot of things. It is my inspiration.”

She told me about the roller coaster she had been on over the last 4 years. She had come back from the states after a year, done too much acid to remain sane, dropped out of art school because of a mental break down, lived in a squat, gone out with a guitarist, had a phantom pregnancy and then broke up with him when he got run out of town after being accused of raping someone else.

“Shit!” I said.
“He was such a cunt he probably did but we were all doing so much acid - who knows what happened in reality.”

I saw her sporadically over the next couple of years; occasional meeting up after one of us had phoned the other. She moved to Bristol to give art college another go and lived with some other art students who talked about the genius of some 70s artist who filmed himself crapping on a coffee table. I thought it sounded un-hygienic

It was a struggle getting into her bed - scrambling over half painted canvases, piles of clothes and things she had found. But it was always worth it.

One night as we lay together in the dark’s warm embrace she said

“I never stopped loving you.”

Nick never even got a snog off Fran.

I've gone metrosexual on your sorry asses.

I have started a long and painful campaign to beautify myself because I am a vain vain man.

It was kind of a new year's resolution but trying to do anything in the winter is pointless because I really can't be bothered. But spring is around the corner and life is good.

The best way to get any big project underway is to start with the small easy stuff that will get it going.

So what better way to start than with an expensive haircut at Tony and Guys? Oh my - that place was good. I didn't know they have special chairs that massage your back as they wash your hair.

And who better to cut your hair than an Italian, black silk shirted and clearly homosexual man called Fabio?

After I explained what I wanted, he said with one hand on his hip and the other stoking his chin thoughtfully looking at me through the mirror.

"I nota understand whata you say."

He then put is hands on my shoulders leaned a little closer, dropped his voice slightly, gave me a smouldering look and said

"But I make you looka fabulous!"
"Hm.. OK" I said

And you know what? He did.

He also sold me some expensive hair paste.

"It is better when you are in the bed." He said a wiggling an eyebrow at me "It makea you less sticky!"
"Great!" I said looking at the label.

Spurned on and encouraged by my new fabulous haircut, checking it out at every opportunity, I decided a trip to Boots was in order.

Slightly overwhelmed the range of beauty products for men there are these days, I picked out a whole load of crap at random and put it in my basket.

When I got home the only thing I could work out what it was for or how to use was some expensive moisturiser which proudly boasted a pro-active re-energizing ingredient.
I put some on this morning but so far I can't say that I look or feel any more pro-active or re-energized than usual but it is early days yet.

Next up - teeth.

Egypt Part 3: AJ’s Mum

I have been a bit slack doing part 2 posts over the months and I think it is about time I made the situation a whole lot worse by tying the loose ends into gapping holes.

So in continuation of Holiday in Egypt: Part 1 - here is Part 3

Because of the insane and surreal but only slightly frightening situation I and my travailing companion, AJ, had got ourselves into in part 2, we had a lot of time to talk.

AJ is an old university friend and it was good to just sit and chat.

One evening, sat on the balcony, watching the sun set over the dry red mountains of the Sahara, drinking homemade cocktails and dubious Egyptian beer, he told me about a conversation he had with his mother that perfectly illustrated the relationship a lot of mothers have with their sons.

He had gone to visit his parents for the weekend and over breakfast his mother asked:

“You went to university with Jemima Goldsmith didn’t you?”
“Yes I did”
“You missed out there!”
“I didn’t actually know her – more of a friend of a friend.”
“You know she has split up with Imran Khan”
“And?”
“Well, that means she is available again.”
“What, you think I should just ring her up and ask her out for a drink?”
“Yeah – why not – she is very rich.”
“For I start I don’t know her number and secondly, well… she is going out with Hugh Grant now!”
“Hugh Grant! Pah! What has he got on you?”

Says it all really - but it got me thinking. So I asked AJ:

“Maybe she had a point. I mean, what does Hugh Grant have on you – on either of us?”
“What, apart from the devastating good looks, the millions of pounds in the bank and the A-list lifestyle? – well nothing I suppose”
“Exactly, it is not as if he can actually say anything funny or intelligent without Richard Curtis writing it down on a piece of paper for him.”
“Hmm...”
“As for Jemima – well she is not *that* hot. If she wasn’t who she was, if she stopped flying her private helicopter to go shopping in Paris every weekend and actually came down to the student union bar to hang out with us mere mortals, you would have given it a crack”
“Damn right. Now you come to mention it, I did have a thing with someone who looked just like her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah – although she was only 5 foot tall, had short black curly hair, a large nose and big flappy ears but apart from that she was a ringer”
“Well there you go – your mum was right!”
“Yeah, pah! Hugh Grant! I wouldn’t swap lives with him”
“Flying to all those tedious premieres!”
“Vacuous soulless Hollywood life!”
“Holidays in San Tropez surrounded by topless super models?”
“I’d take this place any day”*
“No wonder he resorts to prostitutes”
“Yeah fuck you Hugh Grant! You haven’t got a scratch on us.”

* We were suffering heavily from Stockholm syndrome at this point.

Going down a mountain with two planks of wood tied to your feet

Of course these days it isn’t wood but composite fibre glass, reinforced with blended aluminium pro-active power extension bars bulging out like badly made cyborg limbs and with words like “tron” and “atomic”, letters like “B” and “M” and numbers like ”2” and “5” embossed across the wind tunnel tested and computer designed lines.

But that would have been a very long blog title.

However, my skis were bad boys and I certainly wouldn’t have left them in a room with my mother. Presumably that is what the B and M stood for. They carved up the slope, slapped it up and demanded respect. They had attitude, they played by their own rules and I pity any fool that crossed them.

For the first few days they were unruly and hard to control, spitting on the street, snarling at small children and making them cry, always pulling at the tight leash I was trying to keep them on. Women worriedly clutched little ones close and shop keepers closed up when they saw us coming down the street.

I was thinking of taking them back to the pound but then they came across a pair of skis that intimidated such a living fear of the Almighty into them that from then on they behaved like lambs.

The skis belonged to one of the two locals who had kindly taken me and my brother W out for the day. She was once one of Austria’s top extreme skiers but had to give up her day job of being filmed chased by avalanches after a knee injury and was retraining as a doctor. She had flaming red hair and a diamond stud in her tooth.

Her skis had been forged in the furnaces of hell.

They were made from a strange dark materially, studded with iron and covered with ghostly twirling swirls of lost souls.

My skis started quaking and whimpering, cowering in the corner as soon as they saw them.

“Cool skis! Where did you get them?” I asked her on a chair lift.
“Thanks, some guy just gave them to me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, all I had to do was sign some contract.”
The skis sighed and let out a puff of green smoke that twisted into a silently screaming face.
“Maybe I should have read it.” she added.
“Probably just boiler plate.” I said.

Her skiing companion was a once part of the US downhill team but whose professional career ended sadly when a horrific head plant accident broke most of the bones in his face. Even after major re-construction he still looked not too dissimilar from a pancake. He now worked in real estate and was rich enough to take the winter off and spend it in Austria.

Needless to say they were both were insanely good skiers but cautious enough for me and W to make an admirably effort at keeping up. They took us down some unbelievably tree ridden off piste runs through deep light powder that you could float across like puffy clouds.

But skiing holidays aren’t about skiing or the skis you wear. They are not about the beauty of the mountains or the medieval town where you stay. They are not even about dubious contracts with the supernatural.

They are about how drunk you get in the bar afterwards.

And the winner was the chap who came with his girlfriend and her identical twin. They hadn’t been going out very long and when he got drunk he couldn’t tell them apart.

The only way to tell, he explained, was to get so drunk that he threw up and see which one looked away in disgust and which looked concerned and came over to nurse.

Not really understanding women I wanted to ask how that would actually help – but he was busy being sick.

Right, I am off on holiday again

Christ, it is all I seem to do these days. Anyway, toddle pip my petals and I'll not literally see you all in a week - as it were.

Giant Testicles

As I strolled through the bright crisp morning towards the tube station I saw before me, what appeared to be, two giant testicles on a pair of black tighted legs. As I drew closer I realised that they were in fact two giant testicles on a pair of black tighted legs. Not only that but they were dancing to Mozart being played by buskers near by.

Sometimes it is hard to know exactly what you want out of life but sometimes it just pops up out of nowhere on a plate with a sprig of parsley on the side and a nice Chianti. At that very moment in time there was not much more I wanted out of life than to see a pair of giant testicles dancing to Mozart in the cold crisp morning sunshine.

The testicles were trying to raise a money for cancer research I surmised as a charity's name was tattooed across the scrotum.

I should have given them money, I really should, but didn't. I was in my fast walking, ignore all pan-handlers zone that you get sometimes in London and well.. oh I am just making excuses - I didn't and I regret that.

It wasn't long before karma reaped its savage revenge.

A packed train was already at the station when I got to the platform. Most people had pushed on but some had given up and were waiting for the next train. I ran down the train looking for space. I don't normally travel during the rush hour because I can't take the horror but I was late and I had hit it straight smack in the face, right in the middle of the 8:40 squeeze.

I do, however, know the rules:

If anyone standing in a carriage has enough personal space to read a book or paper or feel comfortable or have their own oxygen then there is room for one more.

I saw my opening - a man by the door was reading a tatty penguin classic. The door closing beeps were sounding. I had a second to make my move - it was a hard call but it was his book or me. There wasn't room for both of us. He saw me leap but didn't move his book - He doesn't know the rules I cursed in my head - but it was too late, the doors were closing, I was in the air, there was no turning back. I bumped into him knocking his book up to his chest.

Then he did something - unspeakable - he turned around and nudged me... deliberately... and then looked at me - with a filthy stare! I was horrified - the women I was sharing oxygen with noticed and looked at me to see I was going to cause and awkward scene. I had to do something, so I reached up over to hold onto the bar making sure my elbow was in his face so he was eating coat. Luckily he got out of the next station but the whole incident put me in a bad mood.

So what is the moral of the this story? Always give money to giant testicles? Never travel during the rush hour because some idiot won't know the rules and put in you a slightly bad mood?

Maybe it was as Homer said "just a load of stuff that happened".

Black Dog

He comes from no where, deep beneath the surface fraternity of every day thoughts, stalking quietly and quickly before silently sinking his deathly teeth into your heart, dragging down hope into the dark pits, where distorted reason warps bad memory into inevitable prophecy and twisted illusion to a painful reality. Shame lurks behind any joyful dreams and failure stares in front of wishful schemes. Possibilities are worthless and everything is pointless.

There is brief relief drowning in bottled false hope until the soft unconscious comforts, but it is always shattered in cold sweat and despair amongst tangled sheets.

Then as mysteriously as he came, his jaws release you. .

and well … solo bueno. Woohoo