Silk's Journal

Something so wonderful it's made me update my blog

2012-02-13T19:22:00.002Z

Everyone should look at this. It's the scale of the universe and it's magnificent.

Oooops, Fergus crying. Better go.

Snot

2011-10-18T08:23:00.002Z

Fergus has a cold. This isn't really news, as he usually has some sort of low level sniffling going on, but the one he's got at the moment is a really stinker. Kate keeps getting snail-trails on the shoulder of her cardigan from cuddling him. The washing machine is working overtime (and leaking, but that's a different story).

Last night (or rather, at 02.51 this morning) Fergus was very much away and coughing. At this point we took the nuclear option of bringing him into our bed, something we haven't ever done before. And there was a moment, just a moment, when I was with my beloved, both of us cuddling this wheezing little snot-ball off to sleep, there was a moment when I realised I was the happiest I had ever been, ever.

A thing I learned today

2011-10-16T18:48:00.002Z

The phrase 'steel guitar' may mean a number of different things. Today I saw a pedal steel guitar for the first time. I was surprised, as it doesn't look much like a guitar. But it turns out that there are many different ways of playing 'steel guitar' and many different objects, of varying degrees of guitarishness,

That is all.

Previously...

2011-10-14T20:32:00.002Z

18 December 2003

OK, this is an experiment. Maybe it will give people (friends, one would hope) an insight into what the hell I am up to, most notably in the field of Chemistry which causes me to do odd things and go to odd places.

I have a job. Not a proper one, as my mum would say, but nonetheless a real, pay you money to work here, kind of job. Huzzah. Until (and probably beyond) March 2006 I shall be looking for the OH radical all over the place. "How?", I hear you ask. Simple. I shall be responsible for the maintenance, operation and upgrade of the FAGE instrument, which uses LIF to detect OH concentrations. Which is what I was doing (kinda) in the lab in Philadelphia, but in future I shall be driving round in a truck and taking measurements in the field. Why? Well, chemically OH is very important in the atmosphere, primarily because it is responsible for breaking down pollutants via

R-H + OH -> H2O + R.

where R can be more or less anything, but in particular tends to be some hydrocarbon (i.e. natural gas, petrol, benzene, dioxins [OK, not a hydrocarbon], nitric acid [not a hydrocarbon either], HFCs and other organic pollutants). R. then reacts with other things (primarily oxygen) and ends up being broken down into mostly CO2 and H2O. This tends to be a good thing. Clearly the amount of reaction occurring depends on the amount of OH present, which is why we want to measure it.

OK, that is what I will be doing in Leeds, and around the country (maybe even the world).

Lets see how long this journal lasts, shall we?

Can you tell your left from your right? Part V of V

2011-10-07T18:39:00.003Z

The Chinaman

So, we come to the end of our journey with the ball that inspired it. And this final article throws up a number of questions. What is a 'Chinaman'? Who bowls it? Why are are you telling me this?

(A Chinaman isn't this, but that is very funny, and cricket related, so you should take a look.)

'Puss' Achong was a West Indian bowler of Chinese extraction whose unremarkable career would have passed without much comment, were it not for the fact that one day he threw in an unexpected delivery to English batsman (and here I confess to resorting to Wikipedia) Walter Robins. Robins was expecting SLA (which was Achong's stock delivery) but Achong (who must have been practised this sly delivery in the nets) bowled one out of the back of his hand, in the same manner as a leg spin bowler. Since he was a left-arm bowler, the ball turned in the opposite direction to the leg break, clean bowling a flummoxed Robins. Legend suggests that looking back at his shattered stumps he uttered the immortal phrase, "Fancy being out to a bloody Chinaman!" And the sobriquet stuck.

And in essence, that's it. The Chinaman is the mirror image of the leg break. It's left arm wrist spin and it turns from off to leg, rather than leg to off (like a conventional leg break).

So who bowls it? Well, the answer is, not many people. Like Achong, Johnny Wardle (yet another brilliant Yorkshire bowler) was an SLA who opted to throw in the occasional Chinaman to bewitch his opponent. But Wardle's Test career was nothing like Achong's. Indeed, it was nothing short of brilliant. It is still a mystery to me how such a talented bowler could only have played only 28 Tests (even he was up against Laker and Lock for a spot in the team) but in those 28 he took 102 wickets at an average of only 20.39 runs per wicket. That's better than Laker, Murali, Warne and, pretty much, everyone. Wardle has a decent claim to being the best post-war spinner though SLA (and yet another Yorkshireman!) Bobby Peel's 101 wickets at 16.98 will take some beating!

In more recent times, Paul Adams (whose bowling action has been likened to a 'frog in a blender') and Brad Hogg have had modest success bowling Chinaman. (Here's are great video of Hogg bowling, which includes 'conventional' Chinaman, more than one wrong 'un (googly - note how the batsmen often fail to spot, or 'pick' the googly) and flipper). Brilliant one day batsman Michael Bevan was known to toss in the occasional over of Chinaman (men?).

Why so few? Well, like leg spin, Chinaman is hard to master. Of course, It's useful to have a googly (and despite unpopular misconception, a Chinaman's googly is called just that - a 'googly'. The Chinaman is the stock ball - the mirror image of a leg break) but the disadvantage of a stock ball that breaks towards the (right handed) batsman appears to have led the majority of left-arm spinners to opt for orthodox SLA, rather than wrist spin.

I can think of one other Chinaman bowler. And fittingly for the last word in this article and this entire series, he was the greatest cricket player of all time. Originally picked primarily as an SLA bowler, he developed into one of the greatest batsmen the world had ever seen, a top notch fielder, a left arm fast bowler of prodigious talent, and he developed a Chinaman as well. He was the great Sir Garry Sobers, and as Garry Sobers cannot be surpassed as a cricketer, it is here that we end this series.

Can you tell your left from your right? Part IV of V

2011-10-06T19:44:00.000Z

Leg spin

If you want to understand leg spin, you can do worse things than buy the excellent album 'The Duckworth Lewis Method' by the band of the same name. 'Jiggery Pokery' is one of the few cricket songs I'm aware of (indeed, aside from 'Dreadlock Holiday' by 10CC and the rest of the songs on the DLM album, I can't think of any) and the only one that sets to music 'The Ball of the Century'. But more on this later.

Leg spin is a type of wrist spin. Rather than bowling the ball out of the front of the hand, imparting spin by a rapid twist of the wrist and fingers, wrist spin is delivered from the back of the hand, with the rotation of the wrist and shoulder imparting spin on the ball. Try it with a tennis or ping pong ball. Hold the ball between your fingers, palm facing in the direction you want the ball to travel. Then twist wrist rapidly and as you do so flip the fingers forward, so that the ball shoots out of the back of your hand. It probably won't go where you expected it to, but if you do it right the motion of the wrist should impact spin on the ball. And, hopefully, you won't strain anything.

So here's Terry Jenner, the mentor of a certain great legspinner, explaining how it works.

There are three big advantages to leg spin. First, the stock ball (that is the ordinary leg spin ball, the one the bowler bowls most often) turns from leg to off (the opposite way to the stock ball of the off spinner), which means it is spinning away from a right-handed batsman (in the same way as an SLA). Second, if you do it right, wrist spin imparts more spin on the ball than finger spin. So you can get more turn. (It also imparts more strain on the body - more than one leggie has had to have shoulder surgery). And third, by varying the position of the wrist at the point of delivery, it's possible to bowl a googly.

Bosanquet was an Englishman, and it's entirely possible that no Englishman, not even Grace, had more of an impact on cricket. For 'Bosie' invented the googly. He invented it experimenting with a ping-pong ball. And then he transferred it to the cricket pitch. Suddenly it was possible for a spinner to bowl a ball that turned the 'other' way. For a right-arm wrist spinner (leg spinner) this meant the ball would turn from off to leg, rather than leg to off. And if the batsman wasn't expecting the googly, he was going to end up looking like an awful chump.

Leg spin was big between the wars, when players like Faulkner, Grimmett and O'Reilly mastered Bosie's googly and tormented (mainly English) batsmen. For some reason, probably because despite all the advantages of leg spin it has one major disadvantage - it's so damm difficult to master - leg spin fell out of fashion. There is nothing worse (for a fielding captain) than a bowler bowling poor legspin. Ian Salisbury demonstrated this once or twice.

But Abdur Qadir revitalised the art in the 80s, and then Shane Warne burst onto the scene. People who'd never watched cricket in their lives would have been aware of Warne. He was the biggest thing to hit Ashes cricket since Botham. And what an arrival.

I mean, watch that again. The ball lands a long way outside leg stump and hits off! It hits off! Gatting plays a perfect forward defensive to a leg break and is clean bowled. Incredible. No wonder they call it the 'ball of the century'. It was the first ball Warne had ever bowled in Test cricket in England. That ball, and Warne's absolute mastery of the art, cast such a spell over England batsmen that for years after, even when they couldn't lose, they did.

In the end Warne ended up with 708 Test wickets. Murali got 800 (his 800th was the last wicket to fall in his last ever Test - some timing!). The debate about who was the greater bowler of the two rumbles on, but it's hard to argue with the assertion that those two were the best of all time. Then again, maybe Bill O'Reilly would have taken 800 wickets if he'd got the chance to play 145 Tests!

Final word on the subject of leg spin goes to Terry Jenner, who helped Warne develop into the bowler he became. Here Jenner explains the five different balls(!) that made up Warne's armoury.

Can you tell your left from your right? Part III of V

2011-10-05T15:00:00.001Z

Slow left arm

Cricket is many many things but it isn't sexy. Well, not unless you count Botham trying, and failing, to get his leg-over. And of all the things in cricket that aren't sexy, the term 'slow left arm' is perhaps the drabbest. Even 'rain stopped play' conjures images of a mass exodus to the bar.

And yet, and yet. Slow left arm isn't boring. Or doesn't have to be. Some of the greatest bowlers ever to have played the game bowled SLA. Wilfred Rhodes took over 4200 First Class wickets bowling left-arm spin. These days 50 wickets in a First Class season is considered an excellent achievement, which suggests that a decent bowler would have to hold down a spot in country cricket for 80 years or so to match Rhodes' tally. Clearly, it's a record that will never be broken. And after Rhodes (for both England and Yorkshire) came Hedley Verity. If Bradman was the greatest batsman of all time (and he was) then Verity, who Bradman rated as the best he had ever faced, the only bowler that Bradman felt he had never entirely sussed, might have some claim to be the best bowler ever, certainly the best of his generation. Killed in WWII, the history of the 'Invincible' Australian tour of 1948 might have been different if Verity had still been around.

The physics of it is simple enough. Your left hand is a non-superimposable mirror image of your right. Therefore if you bowl finger spin, in exactly the same way as you bowl off spin, but with your left hand, the ball will rotate in the opposite direction when it leaves your hand, and when it pitches it will spin the other way. And for some reason, this style of bowling is known as slow left arm orthodox. Or SLA for short.

This method of attack is considered to have more potential than off spin as, to a right-handed batsman the ball is now turning away from him (from leg to off). As the ball spins away he may mis-control his shot and end up stumped or caught. Despite the fact that there have been very few left-arm fast bowlers of note over the last few decades (Vaas, Zaheer and Ilott are the only ones who spring immediately to mind) there have been stacks and stacks of slow lefties, probably because they were coach to bowl that way and exploit the (perceived) weakness of right-handed batsmen to the ball turning away.

Worthy of particular comment are Monty Panesar, who broke through into the England side recently but has now fallen away somewhat, the great 'Deadly' Derek Underwood, who is up there with Laker and Verity as the greatest ever English spinner, and Bishan Bedi.

In many teams, the spin bowler is there as a fall back. Defence to the fast-bowlers offence. A guy the captain can turn to when he wants to give his quicks a break, or stem the flow of runs from a batsman making hay. Many SLAs bowl (or are told to bowl) a negative, containing line. "Just don't get hit" seems to be the refrain. Panesar seemed to be suffering from a lack of variety and invention which eventually led to him being dropped by England. But in India spinners have always been seen as wicket takers, and none were more so than Bedi. The reaction of most spinners to being hit to the boundary is to bowl the next ball quicker, and fuller. A fast defensive dart unlikely to get a wicket, but are harder to hit for four. Bedi would bowl slower, loopier, shorter. Taunting and teasing the batsman. "Go on. Try that again!", his bowling said. It must have worked. Bedi took over 250 Test wickets at an average of less than 30.

And so, to the King of Spain. Never the most threatening of bowlers, the sight of him bowling a negative line (basically landing the ball outside leg-stump every time, making it very difficult for the batsman to score any runs, but also virtually impossible for Giles to take a wicket) to contain the great Sachin Tendulkar was not something that would set any pulses racing. But in 2005, in Old Trafford, he produced a classic example of SLA bowling (pay close attention to the commentary by Richie) to dismiss Damien Martyn. The remarkable thing here is that Martyn tries to defend the ball in exactly the right way (we will see another example of this later) and is completely flummoxed when it hits his off-stump. What a ball!

Can you tell your left from your right? Part II of V

2011-10-04T20:11:00.000Z

Off spin

Off spin is bowled by a right-handed bowler, holding the ball between index, middle and ring finger, with the wrist rotated (rapidly) clockwise at the point of delivery. Spin is imparted by the fingers, which is why this type of delivery is known as 'finger spin'. I've also heard finger spin (bowled from either hand) described as orthodox, which I assume is because finger spin was the first type of spin bowling discovered.

Off spin causes the ball (from the bowler's perspective) to spin from left to right upon bouncing (pitching). From a right-handed batsman's perspective, the ball spins from the side of the wicket his bat is held towards (the offside) towards his legs. In cricket parlance, off spin (to a right-handed batsman) spins from off to leg.

It tends to be easier for a batsman to play a ball that is spinning in to him rather than away from him. I guess this is because it is easier to play with the bat close to the body than play away from the body, upsetting your balance. For whatever reason, playing off spin is considered easier (at least if you bat right-handed, as the majority of players do), and therefore off spin is somewhat dull and unfancied. There have been few really successful offspinners in the last 50 years. True, the most successful spinner of all time, Muttiah Muralitharan, who only retired last year, was an offspinner. But Murali possessed extraordinary physical attributes (something to do with hyper-flexible joints) that enabled him to impart tremendous spin in both directions. Orthodox he was not. Your averagely flexible offspinner hasn't had much of a chance. That said, there have been a few very successful post-war off-spinners, of whom Lance Gibbs, Hugh Tayfield and Saqlain Mushtaq spring to mind.

Saqlain is of critical importance, as he is credited with inventing the doosra. Before Saqlain it was widely reckoned that an off-spinner could make the ball turn from off to leg, or make it go straight (the 'arm ball') and through subtle variations in flight, spin and pace vary the trajectory of the ball such that the batsman never quite knew what it would do, but is was impossible for an off spinner to make the ball spin from leg to off. Then Saqlain started bowling the doosra (literally 'the other one') and the world of the offspinner changed for good.

The doosra is controversial because a) no Englishman (or Australian) has yet managed to bowl it properly and b) many believe it is not possible to deliver a doosra without 'chucking', that is bowling with a bent elbow that straightens as you release the ball. Chucking is big no-no, but is hard to spot when a chap is bowling 50mph plus.

Let us put the doosra controversy to one side, and anchor ourselves firmly in the present day. For, after what seems like forever*, England have unearthed an off spin bowler of genuine, match-winning, Aussie-snaring, talent. Graeme Swann. Enough words, here he is delivering the classic off spin ball to dismiss one of the greatest batsmen of modern times. You won't see a better example of off spin than that.

Tomorrow - More finger spin! Left-handed!!

* whereas it has only been half a century, since the great, perhaps greatest off-spinner of all time, the only man to take 19 wickets in a single Test match, played his last Test in 1959

Can you tell your left from your right? Part I of V

2011-10-03T08:02:00.004Z

Inspired by a posting that was made elsewhere I thought it time to go back to basics. It amazes me that there are still people out there to whom phrases like 'finger-spin', 'didn't pick the googly' and 'pitched outside leg' mean nothing. That some of these people live in Test cricket playing nations is nothing short of scandalous.

So. Spin bowling.

Hold your hand (either one will do) palm up in front of you. You can rotate your wrist (I hope) in two directions, clockwise and anticlockwise. If you were to throw a ping pong ball at a table, while rapidly rotating your wrist, you would impact spin on the ball, and when it hit the table, it would deviate from straight. (This is no idle experiment - Bosie invented the googly while doing this exact thing, but more on this in Part IV). If you were to rotate your wrist in the opposite direction while releasing the ball, if would spin in the opposite direction (in theory). Given that you can twist your wrist either clockwise or anticlockwise, and that you can bowl, in theory, with either your left or right hand, I hope you can believe me when I say that there are 4 different ways of bowling 'spin'.

(I ask for Iverson and Mendis to excuse me. I'm not going to get into the Carom ball)

Sadly, I'm not going to teach you how to bowl. If you want to do that you really need to consult someone who can actually play cricket. All I can promise is that by the end of this little series of articles you will understand the differences between off-spin, slow-left arm, leg-spin and chinaman, hopefully illustrated by videos of some all time greats, and the King of Spain.

Tomorrow (ish). Part II - Off-spin!

Real Life. Ish.

2011-09-30T19:45:00.002Z

It's just about possible that someone reads this blog to find out what I am up to. Seems rather unlikely but not outside the bounds of possibility.

So, Kate, Fergus and I are living on Columbia Road in Shoreditch. It's a great spot, offering easy access to the Flower Market, Brick Lane, Broadway Market & London Field (inc. lido), Kingsland Road (yum yum Viet Grill yum yum), Hoxton Square (including The White Cube) and the city.

I am working at DECC, in a vaguely scienceish role. I no longer travel the world and engage in fruitless negotiations. At work I am particularly interested how the electricity system fits together, and how it will fit together in future. Precisely what will the mix of carbon capture (if any), nuclear (if any) and renewables be, how will it all be balanced, will electricity storage (how do you do this at scale - we don't know) play a role, what will that role be, and how will smart meters, smart grid and, well, a smart system work? And what should government be doing (both in terms of innovation support, and policy) to make it happen.

It's one thing to come up with a successful pathway using the 2050 calculator (and you really should do this), it's quite another to make that pathway happen. Particular as you don't know what technologies will be available and what they will cost in 2020, let alone 2050. The answer probably is not to build very large amounts of wind power as this might turn out to be a very expensive and unreliable way of decarbonising the electricity sector. On the other hand, if wind becomes significantly cheaper, and a reliable (and cheap) way of dealing with times when the wind doesn't blow (or blows less than needed) then wind could produce a very large fraction of the UK's electricity demand. Indeed, if you are pretty bullish you can find a route to zero-carbon electricity in the UK that relies almost entirely on wind and foregoes the need to build any nuclear or carbon capture (CCS) plant. However, the question remains (and here you have to read the small print - If there are five cold, almost windless, winter days in 2050, then up to 56 GW of backup generation capacity will be required to ensure that electricity is always available. ) - how do you back it up?

There are no simple answers to these questions. Or if there are, I'm not aware of them.

So that's me.

Kate is working for an NGO that blackmails big companies into reporting their GHG emissions.

Fergus is one (and 6 days), in a nursery 3 days a week, is growing rapidly and is beginning to talk. He can say "yum yum", "bye bye", "no" and "daddy" though his pronunciation is a little off. And he refuses to address Kate as anything other than "daddy". He does this deliberately and then laughs when we try to correct him.

You are welcome to visit. We have 5 kinds of tea in the house and a new coffee machine.

Second story

2011-09-27T13:13:00.004Z

It had taken Gordon a long time to realise the voices were in his head, and not part of some public address system. At first it had been the Tube trains.

"The next station is Old Street. Change at Old Street for Moorfields Eye Hospital."
"This is Canary Wharf. Change here for Docklands Light Railway. This train terminates at Canning Town"

"Stand clear of the doors"

Then it was the buses. He'd assumed this was part of some TfL technology upgrade.

"172 to Brockley Rise"

"Newling Estate. Change here for London Overground Services"

It was all slightly irritating, but Gordon rationalised it. "Probably for the benefit of blind people", he thought to himself, "And tourists."

But eventually things began to get a bit odd. He'd first noticed it when he was cycling along Clerkenwell Road.

"This is the Fryers Delight. Change here for fish and chips."

"Farringdon Road. No right turn."

Before long he'd get an announcement every time he entered the newsagent, alerting him to the presence of newspapers and pints of milk. After spending a few days glancing furiously around for hidden loudspeakers, he'd come to the conclusion that he needed serious medical help. Thankfully, while not too keen on the Doctor's surgery and sitting around in a waiting room with people who smelled slightly of wee, Gordon wasn't the type to avoid the Doc altogether. If there was something wrong (and voices in your head saying "Next stop the sandwich shop" definitely counted as "something wrong") he would head, trepidatiously, to the surgery.

The Doctor was sanguine. "Probably nothing to worry about." He didn't prescribe anything. "Just so long as the voices don't tell you anything ... upsetting."

Gordon was slightly confused. "Upsetting?"

"Violent, I should say. I mean, voices in your head telling you to 'Alight here for Buckingham Palace' are one thing. Voices telling you to kill everyone are quite another thing"

Gordon was relived. "Oh, they never say anything like that."

"Well", said the Doctor, "I wouldn't worry too much about it then."

Zakynthos

2011-09-14T12:15:00.002Z

Fergus is still here

2011-09-01T20:40:00.001Z

The great British Novella

2011-08-27T13:09:00.001Z

So, I dug out the old notebooks. "There's bound to be something there the public want", I though to myself, "Probably enough for a novella or maybe even a collection of witty short stories".

Alas, no. It took my some time to decipher the contents, as my handwriting has, over the last decade or so, began to resemble something that pre-dates Linear A but I appear to have unearthed the following

A 'to-do' list from when I worked at the University of Leeds. I note th
at most of the things to-do were not crossed out, suggesting that they in fact weren't
A short PERL script called "Sub random_link"
A long list of bands and singles. Not sure what the purpose of this was. Probably bored in a lecture
A large number of unfinished letters, most of which were due to be transcribed to email but never made it
A sudoku
Some fantasy cricket teams (what sort of person creates these, and what sort of person admits to this on his own blog?)
Matt black finish on cell lids
Details of the time and location of appointments from the horrible, horrible time when I was flat-hunting in London and had to meet with people who then judged whether they wanted to live with me or not

Also an airship

and a house

So, er

2011-06-21T19:36:00.002Z

It's been a while. To be honest, Kate and I have been completely preoccupied with Fergus. He's got to a stage where he's so engaging and, well, just lovely (I know, but sometimes I lack the words to express things) that posting on the blog or writing emails (my correspondence levels have dropped to zero) just seems rather unexciting.

And meanwhile, the world is ending.

Kate has been worried about this for a long time. There have probably been 10,001 blog posts on the subject already, and she has probably read them all. Me, I'm new to the subject. I knew it was bubbling along in the background, but since I didn't understand it I assumed that it didn't concern me (a very odd logical position, but probably a default human reaction to big things we can't control, like climate change...)

Anyway, Greece may or may not go pop. But whatever happens, it seems to me that humble Civil Servants like me are pissing in the wind. While we pontificate about decarbonising the UK, and global, economy, a massive financial tsunami (this is not 'literally a financial tsunami' - I heard someone, on the 'Today' Programme no less, claim that hydroelectricity 'literally spins water into money' which sounds like alchemy to me, but I digress) is about to engulf, well, you get the point.

Basically, I think within a year or so we're going to look back and wonder what on earth we thought we were doing.

Are you English?

2011-06-15T13:13:00.001Z

If not, this may be inexplicable. (Warning - this is about cricket)

Growing boy

2011-04-12T06:16:00.002Z

Paranoia

2011-04-11T08:12:00.001Z

Thanks to htfb for drawing our attention to the Tinfoil Hat Song.

Story

2011-04-09T21:04:00.001Z

Molton Cross Services on the A1(M) are the remotest in the country. Thousands of cars and hundreds of lorries pass every day, with a good many stopping off for coffee or toilet, but the phrase "middle of nowhere" could have been coined to describe Molton Cross. The nearest major settlement to 'the Westies', as they called themselves, was Worksop, some 20 miles away. Doncaster was closer, only 15 miles from the East side, but inaccessible to the Westies, unless they wanted to take a 30 mile round trip via Junction 34.

There wasn't even a place called Molton Cross. Perhaps a farm had stood here some time ago, from which the name was taken. Nobody recalled, and Norman Vesper, the designer wasn't telling. He died in 1981.

Vesper's Art Deco Design had won several awards at the time - a time when one could win awards for designing service stations, municipal buildings and public conveniences - but was now sadly decayed and tatty looking. Molton Cross was definitely a service station for the old-fashioned, or unaware. The bright lights of Barchley (21 miles south) or Doncaster Pew (27 north), with fast-food outlets, slot machines and Cosa Nostra coffee, drew in far more punters. At Molton it was mainly truck drivers, cardigan wearers and families that simply had to stop because Tommy had just puked and Gilly wouldn't stop screaming.

Doug heaved the bag of Lo-Cost frozen chips onto the counter and carefully poured a good portion of the contents into the fryer basket. Things began to pick up from around midday, but he reckoned the ten till eight shift was the best one to be on. Breakfast was always a nightmare, and the sort of person who stopped off at Molton Cross after nine at night was a bit ... weird. Lunch and dinner could be busy, especially on Bank Holidays, but where otherwise easy enough.

You had to have a car for this job. All the Westies drove to work, seeing as there was barely a house or caravan within walking distance of the place (the MotoLodge didn't count - no one spent more than one night there. One night was enough for a lifetime) and they are lived West of the M1. Westies had always lived West, it was part of the folklore of the place. No one knew why, but they'd never employed anyone from the other side. Most were from around Worksop, but there were a few from even as far away as the outskirts of Rotherham. But not a single employee came (or admitted to coming) from Retford, Doncaster or Bawtry. That was just the way things were.

Doug often spent his coffee breaks sipping from his flask (that was the first thing you learnt - you might sell the stuff, but don't get into the habit of using. As true for Molton coffee as for Horse) gazing Eastward. His thoughts, in idle times (and there were plenty of those, particularly on winter weekdays), were often drawn Eastward. He'd never been there. Never would do. It would be an odd thing for a bloke who worked in a Motorway Service Station to take a trip to look at another Motorway Service Station, and Doug wasn't odd. He had a slightly unhealthy passion for Airfix models, but otherwise, well, as sound as a pound. That was Doug.

But where they like him? Sue thought this was a silly question to think up. "It's just a Service Station, Doug. Just like this one.". She'd tease him. "There's probably a little chap called Doug, looking after the chips, over there". He hated that. "Little chap".

Francis was a deep thinker. Or what passed for a deep thinker on the staff. He'd been at Molton (so he said) since it opened (which didn't seem possible, but no one challenged him on the point). "You can't trust 'em". "Who?". "Easties".

Doug wasn't sure what to think. He'd been to Germany once, and seen these castles, facing each other. The tour guide had told had been built by two warring brothers. Doug had shivered when he'd heard that. It sounded eirily familiar.

Nigel, the hated Supervisor, interupted his thinking. "Break's over, Doug. It's Friday, and you know what that means...". "Oh great", thought Doug, "stale cod".

On the other side of the motorway, in the kitchen, Douglas stood brooding, sharpening a vegetable knife. Waiting.

Down in the valley

2011-03-27T19:21:00.002Z

Staithes is pretty steep. Tiny cottages perched on either side of the ravine carved by Staithes Beck. Friday was remarkable, as we awoke to find fog so thick one side of the harbour was not visible from the other. Yet up top (where most Staithes residents actually live, in more spacious and more modern dwellings) the fog had burnt off by 10. Imagine trying to sail through that before GPS. Terrifying.

It's a brilliant part of Yorkshire, which is, in my humble, the most brilliant part of England. From the slight eeriness of Whitby (even more so on Thursday when the Goths started to arrive) to the magnificent coastline and massive cliffs, the rugged splendour (I risk turning into a travel writer at this point) of the moors and the gentle beauty (gentle?) of the Esk Valley, it's all utterly marvelous.

And then there's the Museum of Victorian Science. Which defies description, and is utterly unmissable.

There's no action

2011-02-27T08:57:00.003Z

Nonce sense

2011-02-14T09:33:00.002Z

Hello

Sorry. Been preoccupied. In the meantime this is good. Or alright, at least.

A good 'un

2011-01-30T12:34:00.001Z

Better late than never

2011-01-28T15:17:00.002Z

So, was 35 t'other day. Clearly not cool.

Have just discovered Kanye West, thanks to Kate. So def. not cool at all. Would have been cool in about 2003. But anyway, on 23rd Nov 2009 I wrote some stuff about albums. Well, clearly I missed The College Dropout

Wow. Quite incredible. Buy it.

Hopes and dreams

2011-01-03T21:25:00.002Z

(Warning - Contains nothing but comments on parenthood. Very dull indeed.)

(Warning - All children are different. If you have/are planning to have a child, none of this may be remotely relevant. But it may still be dull)

So, if you've ever had to conceal yourself from a Raston Warrior Robot, you'll know how hard it is to stay perfectly still for what seems like a very lobg time, terrified that the slightest movement will cause catastrophe. Such is trying to get Fergus to sleep.

Getting Fergus to sleep is pretty much our sole obssession these days. Indeed, I'm not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow as this involves getting up too early, trying not to wake Fergus, going to work, possibly working, coming home to a frazzled Kate, saying hello to Kate, saying hello to Fergus, feeding Fergus, bathing Fergus and then trying to get him to go to sleep.

The saying hello bit and the bathing bit are good fun, but don't last all that long before the going to sleep bit begins. Which is where trouble starts.

Fergus really doesn't like going to sleep. He likes sleeping. He's been known to sleep for 7 hours without waking. He'll usually give you at least 3, and in the middle of the night he'll usually drop off immediately after a feed. But in the daytime, when he's meant to be napping for at least 4 hours, and in the evening, when he's meant to go down at some early hour, he has a pathalogical aversion to dropping off. Even the slightest suggestion that you intend to do a bit of gentle rocking and shssshing is met with a tantrum, and if you place him in his crib before he's totally, absolutely and completely asleep, he gets very cross indeed. And even if you do succeed in getting him down, there's a fair chance that he'll wake up an hour later and get very cross indeed.

I'd never imagined that being the parent of a baby could be so full on. For Kate, it's basically a 24 hour minus whatever he sleeps job. Of course, she gets less sleep than him, because she has to get him to sleep, and make sure he's really asleep before putting him down. This can take an hour. In the daytime, she has the time to take a shower and sometimes eat breakfast before he needs to be played with, taken out for walks (the only way he manages to nap in the day), fed, changed, taken for another walk, then played with until dad gets home. For me, work is a break, and I don't have to get up in the night (well, most nights I don't) but the hours between getting home and going to sleep are probably 75% trying to get Fergus to sleep.

Not that either of us regret having him, as he's bubbly, engaging and friendly (when not tired). But it's harder work than either of us had ever imagined.

At some point, I guess, he'll get used to going to sleep on his own. At which point I'll be able to go down the pub again!

More photos

2011-01-02T21:41:00.004Z

Happy New Year one and all.

The boy is taking up quite a bit of our time at present (and The Ashes are taking up the rest of mine), so to keep you occupied, here are some very cute pictures.

Peter, you've lost the news!

2010-12-24T16:05:00.003Z

Babytime has kept me away from blogger (and vermouth) for some time. And in the interim there have been sad happenings.

Captain Beefheart is dead. He'd suffered from MS for some time, yet had still been producing (art, rather than music). I know that many people consider Trout Mask Replica to be basically bonkers, and unlistenable, but I think it's a work of utter genius, and, more importantly, extremely enjoyable.

and the man who inspired this and this and this is dead, too.

Another great idea!

2010-12-08T08:03:00.002Z

"The plans could see addicts lose benefits if they do not co-operate. "

I can see absolutely no drawbacks with inflicting further poverty on people addicted to expensive, illegal drugs. I am a Tory Minister.

Well, he did ask

2010-11-21T21:22:00.002Z

Colin wondered (by text message).

My response to his wondering is as follows :

There are a number of things one could do to impact on the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

One is to couple carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology with biomass. This enables you to remove CO2 from the air (using a plant) and capture CO2 (by burning the plant in a CCS ... er ... plant). This has been discussed. It requires you to be able to produce, in a sustainable manner, a lot of biomass.

Cquestrate have a rather novel method, which doesn't act on the atmosphere directly, but rather on the ocean. You can contribute to the development of this idea, since it is open source.

Air Fuel Synthesis have a rather different idea.

Cquestrate and AFS both require one to be able to generate a very large amount of energy in a way that does not emit large amounts of CO2.

What makes a man?

2010-11-16T18:37:00.002Z

I am a rational being. I have 9 GCSEs, 3 A Levels (4 if you count 'General Studies'), 2 degrees and a wealth of experience, both theoretical and practical. I can tile a roof, cut a slate, align a laser, help to draft vague, non-committal statements on climate change[1], and patronise policy officials who don't understand the difference between kiloWatts and kiloWatt Hours.

So why, when I extract my headphones from my pocket, pannier or rucksack, and they are all twisted up, do I randomly pull, jerk and twist the cables, desperately trying to free the trapped ends? I noticed that, after about 2 minutes of doing this, if I patiently sat down and examined the problem at hand, it was trivial to calmly track the knot back to its source and undo it. A pigeon could have done it in 30 seconds.

Why am I irrational? Is everyone irrational?

[1] I didn't write para 23, but it's exactly the sort of thing I spent 2 years doing, and I doubtless commented on it at some point - and yes, it's meaningless

Cold Climate

2010-11-11T08:26:00.000Z

Oh dear.

More photos

2010-11-04T13:11:00.000Z

Some more photos of Fergus are available. He's the smallest one.

Inferiority complex

2010-10-27T21:52:00.003Z

In an attempt to keep up with what other people are actually doing, seeing as I will never go out for a beer again (see posts from 24th Sept and thereafter), I've been reading Infinitarian, and Small Bed and Large Bears, and other blogs. And it strikes me that I've got some work to do.

I've never really seen the point of Twitter. You really don't need to know my thoughts as they come into my head, nor the contents of my sandwich (humus and salad, if you really want to know). A blog on the other hand is a useful medium (perhaps) through which one could communicate something about one's life to the interested, assuming they exist. And if they don't, it at least gives electrons something to do. They'd just be sitting there claiming housing benefit, otherwise.

But yeah. People with blogs, or at least people I know with blogs, can write. This is a bit worrying, as I have nothing to say. Well, there's poo, obviously, but as any Guardian reader will tell you, there's only one thing worse that someone who writes about their babies and expects others to read about it, and that's people who post comments under the baby article complaining about the columnist writing about babies. [As an aside, the Internet really doesn't work, does it? I've yet to see a single person post a comment on any webpage that could be summed up as "That's an interesting point of view and it's really changed the way I look at the world". Someone pointed out that the Internet was simply a place where mad and stupid people, with mad, stupid and extreme views, can hang out together and in some way convince themselves that they are, in fact, rationale and normal. Hence the more extreme elements of the Tea Party, I guess. But I digress...]

So, herm. I was meant to be writing something. In fact, I was going to publish a Copenhagen dialogue, between Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg (no relations) about the outcome of the Copenhagen conference last December. But Kate persuaded not to do so, on the grounds that frankly expressing my ideas, even in a semi-anonymous blog like this one, might harm my career (such that it is) and might, indeed, break the Civil Service Code, which I am, as an honourable man, bound by. Which is a shame, given that Copenhagen was, I believe, one of the most critical moments in modern history (not because it delivered any world-changing outcomes - it didn't, but because it was an attempt at multilateralism on a scale that has never been tried before, the Bretton Wood conference doesn't even come close)

And I was there. In fact, I was there representing you (unless you aren't an EU citizen, in which case, I'm sorry). That's probably my moment of history (well that, and my 1/27,537th of a Nobel Peace Prize) I'll get to tell my grandchildren about it. And things like beaches, polar bears, and Bangladesh. But I'm getting maudlin. Let's leave it there.

Albums you don't own, Episode 13 - Can't Buy A Thrill

2010-10-25T21:01:00.003Z

Steely Dan? The band that put the "middle" in MOR? I mean, seriously dude, this is Jazz-Rock for goodness sakes! You cannot be serious!

Can't Buy a Thrill, is the first, and in my humble, best Steely Dan album. Rolling Stone liked it so much they listed in as the #238th best of all time, though I'd place it even higher than that.

Despite featuring 13 different musicians, and a diverse range of instruments (including an electric sitar, and flugelhorn), I think it works best of all the Steely Dan albums because of its musical simplicity. Jazz influences are clearly present, but not overplayed. Add some great lyrics and great stories - Kings, Turn That Heartbeat Over Again, Brooklyn (Owes The Charmer Over Me) - and some fantastic perfomances, particularly on Reelin' In The Years, and you have one mighty fine album. Kate suggests that Dirty Work is the best song here, and I won't disagree with her. And of course, you need something anthemic to sing along to in the bath. Midnight Cruiser should suit your tastes perfectly sir.

I think it gets better and better the more you listen to it, and should grace absolutely any record collection.

Exterminate!

2010-10-18T12:06:00.000Z

Kate might look happy now, but she hasn't noticed the Dalek materialising behind her!

The mother of invention

2010-10-16T15:08:00.000Z

Due to a packing error (how embarrassing! I am usually the King of Packing!) I had to wear the same pair of boxers shorts for 4 days running.

And I discovered it is perfectly possible to do this with no ill effects whatsoever! Hurrah! Less washing for me!

The Drinks Cabinet

2010-10-15T16:30:00.001Z

I should have pointed you at this earlier.

We are proud to announce the arrival of "The Drinks Cabinet", a blog aimed at exploring some of the more obscure optics. It can be found at thedrinkscabinet.blogspot.com

Also

2010-10-09T13:17:00.002Z

Horse!

More for the album

2010-10-09T13:15:00.002Z

Plumbing

2010-10-05T11:36:00.001Z

More Fergus

2010-09-28T21:21:00.003Z

Fergus Michael Davey

2010-09-24T20:22:00.002Z

Last days of the Dales

2010-09-17T17:43:00.004Z

'ello

On the Wednesday we headed to Richmond. As you can see, we saw some odd sights along the way.

We aren't sure what it changed into, but we are sure that the whole thing went off without an argument. Did you know Bill Bryson used to be a journalist in Yorkshire? I wonder if he ever came up with a headline as good as this one?

Richmond is a very beautiful market town in North Yorks, famous mainly for the Geography Field Trip I took there when I was 16. As I recall, I spend an afternoon asking locals if they would like a railway station. They said they would (the railway station having closed i n 1969) but sadly, for them, British Rail (it's not called that any more, technically I mean "National Rail") have not seen fit to relay the tracks. So if you want to get to Richmond, you have to take the bus. Or cycle.

Richmond Market Square is a remarkable place. Aside from the Green Howards Regimental Museum I spotted no fewer than many pubs and hotel bars on the market square itself. I mean, I know it can get cold here in the winter, but you could go for a bracing walk or something. You don't have to go to the pub...

Dear old blogger won't let me add any more pictures to this post, so I shall move on.

Tuesday

2010-08-14T19:28:00.005Z

Perhaps the most beautiful of all. Up from Kirkby Stephen and across Birkdale Common, then down the most marvelous marvel, Swaledale. Keld, Thwaite, Muker (a drink at The Farmers Arms, which is a very fine pub), then the magnificently named Crackpot and back across the Swale at Low Row.

We lunched in Reeth, dumped out panniers at the Black Bull Inn and cycled up Arkengarthdale, via the somewhat alarming descent and ohshitohshitohshit cycle across the Mill Bottom Ford at 30mph faster than you anticipated.

A pint at the Charles Bathurst Inn (no idea) and then we went to Whaw. Oh Daddy, please don't go to Whaw. It's so pointless. And there's no pub in Booze, either. But the scenery is magnificent.

Back to Reeth for dinner.

Colin weighs up his options.

At this speed, light itself gets distorted.

Birkdale Beck

Swaledale

House prices in the North of England remain depressed.

Monday

2010-08-14T08:21:00.009Z

Colin and I have been on holiday. Some people were aghast when I announced I was going cycling for 5 days and leaving my (very) pregnant wife at home, to which I responded "... er." But Kate was OK with it. Really. And I'll be off for a month after the baby arrives, which will be nice.

So, the holiday. I haven't got a picture of the minicab that took us to Kings Cross, but you can imagine it. Resplendent, glowing and powerful. I think it was a Ford Mondeo. Before we knew it the train has whisked us to Settle.

The Settle to Carlisle railway is one of the most impressive engineering feats of the Victorian age, cutting through some of England's most inhospitable and railwayable terrain. Colin and I opted to celebrate this marvel by getting off the train and travelling (the first part of the route) by bicycle, rather than train.

We can both recommend "Off the rails" cycle hire, at Settle station. If you are in Settle. And want to cycle, of course.

(Incidentally, you may find this a long and unexpectedly boring blog post. Still, unlike Kate you don't have to sit through the entire 3 hour slide show)

The railway runs up Ribblesdale, which turns from torrent to dribble. You will notice, throughout, that the weather in these pictures is ... variable. We had plenty of sun. And plenty of rain, too.

Eventually, you get to the Ribblehead, and you really, really need a beer. Fortunately such eventualities are provided for - The Station Inn is a very fine establishment and England were 71-1 chasing 118 to win (which they would do later that afternoon, by which point we would be in Dentdale)

The main advantage of cycling up Ribblesdale, rather than taking the train, is that you can't really see the viaducts from the train. Ribblehead viaduct is 104 feet high, spans 440 yards and my camera phone is a completely inappropriate device to attempt to capture it on.

The people in this part of the world are incurable optimists. Something to do with the weather, I think.

So Colin and I crossed into Dentdale, found ourselves in Cumbria, had lunch, then headed down to Sedb', up Garsdale and back into Yorkshire. The first site that greets you as you come into God's own county is the Moorcock Inn. A more welcoming sight I can't think of.

Finally, we crossed back into Cumbria and down into the Valley of Eden (not a Dale) and the town of Kirkby Stephen. We were not expecting to find Uther Pendragon's castle at the top if the Eden Valley, but there it was.

Tomorrow you get Swaledale, Arkengarthdale and a picture of Colin crossing a ford!!!

DougStock 2010 (and The Big Society)

2010-08-13T08:56:00.000Z

DougStock met for the weekend in Oxford. Much fun was had. We are particularly grateful for the work of Tobias Ashmole, and in the spirit of David Cameron's Big Society Colin and The Yak spent the afternoon running the cloakroom.

Next week J-P and Juliet attempt open heart-surgery, with hilarious consequences. Remember! Public services are provided simply becuase good, honest, decent, hardworking people are too lazy to run their own schools, collect their own rubbish and open their own museums.

2050 pathway : How to decarbonise the UK

2010-07-29T09:27:00.001Z

I've been playing with the DECC tool (I can do this at work because it's my job). I have decarbonised the UK. Can you?

2050 pathway

Brilliant article

2010-07-28T16:01:00.002Z

One characterisation of the theory of man-made climate change is that scientists observed some warming, and decided to blame CO2 (probably because said scientists were Commies, or Nazis, or both or something)

This is balls.

What happened.

Long before any significant warming was observed, some scientists suggested that we would observe warming, and that this would be driven by CO2.
We saw warming, just like they predicted

I would suggest that if a scientist tells you you've got a problem, and then the data validates his claims, you should probably do something about it.

This excellent article sets out how warming was predicted back in 1975 (and 1965).

Incidentally

2010-07-26T11:33:00.001Z

BPL has some very good articles on the science of Climate Change.

Climate Change

2010-07-24T09:18:00.003Z

Hello

I'm doing some thinking on how to present the outcome of last year's Copenhagen Conference. Particularly timely, given news.

If you are interested in this, let me know and I'll send you an email.

Fighting fit

2010-07-24T09:12:00.003Z

CRB and I are off cycling in the Dales in a few weeks, and his calves are bigger than mine. This poses a bit of a problem for hills. In need to do some exercise.

Gym? No thanks. Running? Hurts my knees. Steroids? Too expensive.

We made our own amusement back in the 90s, and by golly we don't need no new fangled techniques to get fit. Just willpower (sadly lacking) and three good meals a day (a cheese and onion pasty counts as one of these).

So I've filled my panniers with 7.5 litres of paint (in a tin, bozo!) and am cycling (or wobbling) all over London, building up Tour de France style stamina.

If you see a crushed bicycle lying in a massive pool of pale blue paint, that will be me.

Jazz

2010-07-16T21:30:00.002Z

Off to Uncle Dick's Jazz Picnic on the Isle of Wight tomorrow. This is not a euphemism.

Cash

2010-07-13T22:06:00.005Z

Rich Hall says that if you got into the music of Johnny Cash or Ray Charles because you enjoyed "Walk the line" or "Ray" you are ... well, let's just say it wasn't complimentary.

He also suggests that Jamie Foxx got an Oscar(TM) for his portrayal of Charles, and Joachim Phoenix only got nominated for an Oscar(TM) for his portrayal of Cash ... well, he wasn't entirely complimentary there, either.

Indeed, he suggests that Hollywood greatly simplifies the lives of individuals and reduces them to a series of snapshots that are completely unrealistic, and two dimensional.

I can't comment on that, since no one has written my biopic. However, I understand (based on a recent ante-natal class) that Hollywood, or indeed television, depictions of birth are utter bollocks. You do not give birth lying on your back, nor are you surrounded (usually) by medics in face masks, nor does the mother get handed a six month old looking baby nor does her make-up stay in place.

I'll be able to give you a more accurate description in a few months time, but it seems to involve a fair degree of squatting, or crawling on all fours, and (if all goes well) less medical intervention than you might imagine. And less make-up, too.

It gets better

2010-07-11T15:59:00.005Z

M requested photos. We cannot refused requests.

One the left, you can see our living room wall, repainted 'DH Red'. I think the blue painting (something I picked up in Ghana at the negotiations in 2008) works quite well.

Not much else to say really. It's a wall. We painted it red.

Below you can see a step, which is blue. We call it the 'blue step'. The white blobs need painting over, but other than that it's finished. Rebuilt from scratch. Solid as a solid-thing, rather than rotten to the core (the previous incarnation had passed its use-by date).

"So what", you say. "It's just a bloomin' step!". Well, yes, and no. On the one hand, a step it is. On the other hand, take the lid off and it's a storage space! Incredible.

You need to know this

2010-07-04T21:24:00.002Z

Hello

Short DIY update. Painted one wall of the living room "DH Red". So 2/3rds of the way there now.

Meanwhile, over in the spare room, we're pretty much done. Gloss applied, radiator painted, walls finished and the fiddly join between the ceiling/walls done to the best of our ability. So don't look up.

Outside, I've painted the veranda, blueish.

Next week, the plumber visits on Thursday and we replace the wooden steps at the weekend. Watch this space!

The build-up to Brazil '14 starts here!

2010-06-27T21:35:00.003Z

It's so unfair. If the linesman had awarded us a goal, and if we hadn't conceded another 2 and if we hadn't been comprehensively outplayed by a better side and if the manager had selected a squad of fit players and if he'd played them in their proper positions, we might have won the World Cup. (We probably wouldn't have, though)

Scilly

2010-06-20T21:34:00.001Z

We have just got back from here. Beautiful, isn't it?

Her Majesty

2010-06-06T20:12:00.002Z

A bit late, but what does that matter, eh?

Friday 28th May was The Queen's Birthday, and as a pampered and over-paid public servant, I, along with my colleagues across Whitehall, got the day off.

But the day was no holiday. Oh no. I am proud to announce that I achieved the following

Got paint mixed. Can now paint bedrooms and lounge. Didn't actually paint but it's a start
Got some wood delivered. Can now mend outside step. Didn't actually mend step but you get the picture
Had a plumber round to discuss replacing the boiler. He didn't actually replace the boiler
Took the dry-cleaning in. Hopefully the dry-cleaner is more focused on delivery than I am
Bought a Network Railcard. 33% of most journeys!
Went to Cambridge and got pissed at Beer festival. Now that is what I call achieving your objectives.

Angry

2010-05-28T08:23:00.002Z

Hello

I don't usually get angry about stuff. You know me. But the World Cup is here and has the whole world gone mad?

Clearly, football sold its soul for millions of pounds years ago, but even so, the new Carlsberg advert is a horrible, horrible thing. It's bad enough seeing Botham participate in this nonsense, but to bring Bobby Robson into it is in really bad taste. Perhaps I should send a letter to the Daily Mail.

And the Coke advert is horrible too.

Trains, plans, omnibuses and boats

2010-05-04T17:06:00.003Z

OK. So I haven't posted about Copenhagen yet. But I have a good excuse. Kate and I went to Venice instead, and it was awesome.

Took boat back to the airport today. Cruising back to the airport in your own private compartment in a speedboat is quite a good way to travel.

Promises, promises

2010-04-25T19:41:00.000Z

I did promise, back in Copenhagen, that I'd share my thoughts on what actually happened, once I'd moved job. It has taken longer than expected, but I have moved job.

I'll try to post something concise, novel and interesting later this week.

The mole

2010-04-21T19:36:00.002Z

There are a few bits of literature out there that deserve to, nay need to, be preserved for the cockroach civilization that is bound to follow us, somewhere down the road to eternity. Hamlet, for example (though I have never seen what all the fuss was about - just kill the bleeder and be done with it). The Cherry Orchard. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. (Only joking). Sadly, I've not created any masterpieces. The Live Parrot sketch hardly ranks alongside leaping nuns or Del Boy falling over.

But this. It's not particularly new (I first read it ages ago), and it is, after all, only a restaurant review, but it is the English language stretched to its absolute limit. Incredible.

The eyes ... the eyes...

2010-04-21T10:38:00.000Z

My trip to the opticians confirmed what I had always suspected. I am, in fact, superhuman. I am short-sighted in my left eye, and long-sighted in my right eye. In this way, like Ivor Cutler, I can use my left to see insects and bacterias, and with my right I can see the stars and the nebulas.

Sadly, the optician is an evil optician and, jealous of these incredible powers, she has prescribed me glasses.

Being is believing

2010-04-12T20:42:00.003Z

It appears that I, too, am pregnant. Or at least, I'm undergoing hormonal changes that, in my case, appear to be making me gain weight, and have weird dreams.

How weird.

Never seen Citizen Kane

2010-04-11T20:29:00.003Z

Hello

Contains spoliers. And, indeed, spoilers.

Within a few weeks, I've seen The Godfather Part I, and The Shining. There was a woman on Radio 4 pooh-pooing Citizen Kane, but I don't believe her and I'm going to get the DVD out soon.

The Shining was somewhat disappointing. I wouldn't put it in a top 100 of anything, and it's no surprise to read that it wasn't critically acclaimed on release, but is now well thought of. The respective careers of Stanley and Jack probably have quite a lot to do with that. And I bloody hate Stephen bloody King and his tired "psychic child" meme (although possible this is my fault for watching The Langoliers, which was dreadful). Don't even get me started on "It". Grrr. Suffice to say King could teach Donaldson a thing or two about flaccid prose.

So, the bad stuff. Nicholson is bad. I don't care if "Heeeeere's Johnny!" is one of the all time great moments in cinema (and it probably is). He's bug eyed and crazy from scene one (just as Kubrick was worried he would be) and as a result you don't get any sense of the characters slow descent into madness. Just grab the axe already and start chopping! And the film doesn't actually make any sense, does it. I mean. It would be just lovely if there was total ambiguity here. Is this the supernatural, or merely some guy cracking up and a oversensitive child? Is Lloyd the barman the devil, or a figment of Jack's imagination? Indeed, does the entire thing happen because the hotel manager has sowed the idea in Jack's mind? But then the 'ghosts' break Jack out of his prison cell, and the pyschological thriller has been replaced by a not particularly clever horror flick.

And the character who dies is just ... well ... stupid. Couldn't they have found a more subtle way to get a working snow-mobile out there?

But there is some remarkably good stuff here. The two sisters. The kid himself, who despite my hatred of child actors is actually really good. The final scene in the maze, though heavily telegraphed earlier in the movie, is really impressive. Most of all, there's the fantastic way in which Kubrick has shot the hotel, particularly my favourite bits where the kid is cycling round and round the place on his tricycle.

OK, so I'm not a fan of horror movies, and I've already pointed out my antipathy towards Stephen King, but I felt here was a genuinely brilliant movie that just wasn't, because of Nicholson's overacting, and a screenplan that didn't match the brilliance of the cinematrography.

Still, it's a very good film. But "The Shinning" is better. Now that is one of the greatest things to ever have been recorded on celluloid.

That's embarrassing

2010-04-07T10:44:00.001Z

I was listening to "Taxman" on my headphones, and just for a second I played air-guitar in the office. I hope no one noticed.

No Man Is An Archipelago

2010-04-05T20:06:00.003Z

Hello

British Sea Power's next Album is a soundtrack to a documentary that was recorded 76 years ago. Odd.

The link, aside from the fact that I like British Sea Power, to this blog, is that Kate & I have just got back from a splendid weekend on the Isle of Wight. Usual suspects attended. 10 units of alcohol per drinker per night were successfully consumed.

"But hey!", you cry, "you haven't posted for a month and this is the best news you can offer?"

Well, no. There is news of a very significant nature. Indeed, the very significance of this news is more significant than any previous news, even news from May of last year. To whit, Kate & I are expecting a baby, in September. Which is considerably more of a hassle for Kate than it is for me. Mumsnet might give you an idea of the sort of hassle that can occur. I am glossing over the details.

I'm not sure I can top that, so I'll sign off here.

Albums you don't own, Episode 2 : Super Furry Animals "Rings around the world"

2010-03-06T10:46:00.003Z

Certain records are, to me, evocative of a certain time and place. I suspect they evoke feelings of a different time and place in you. I mean, if we all got the feeling of my slightly damp student room in Jericho when we listened to "Bosanova" by Pixies, it would be weird.

It turns out, as I stick on SFA's "Rings around the world" that it evokes the feeling of living in Philadelphia. After some consideration I have come to the conclusion that this is because I bought it while living in Philadelphia. And listened to it in Philadelphia. And saw SFA on tour, playing music from the album, in Philadelphia. That, as they say, would be it then.

It's a stonking album, the Furreez strongest, I think (though I haven't yet heard Mwng). Lacking the descriptive talents of music journalists, I can only state that while the album doesn't have (to me) any tracks that stand out individually, the construct is a marvelous, symphonic marvel. It's quite unlike anything else in my record collection, and I think it's interesting that while Indie and Britpop seemed to have reached a dead-end by 2001, SFA came out with something completely from leftfield that left everyone else looking confused. And the videos were great too.

If ya don't have it, buy it. Or at least borrow my copy.

Joy of Six

2010-03-03T17:00:00.002Z

Sign this. www.petition.fm/petitions/6musicasiannet/1000/

Or don't.

Statement

2010-02-22T09:45:00.002Z

I, James Brian Davey, being of sound mind and body, hereby annouce that, at the age of 34 years, I have watched "The Godfather Part I" and, while I did not entirely understand every word spoken by Mr Brando, I can appreciate why people think this film is one of the greatest ever.

Albums I don't own : Episode one

2010-02-13T21:44:00.003Z

Kate's records have turned up. There's some incredible stuff here which I'm going to try and extract into digital format using our new turntable. Highlights include

Flanders and Swann, "At the drop of a hat" and "At the drop of another hat"
Linda and Paul McCartney, "Ram"
Elvis Costello and the Attractions, "My Aim is true", "Armed Forces" & "Get Happy!" plus "Almost Blue", his C&W album
various Bob Dylan, Kate Bush and Steely Dan albums
plus "Lazarus" by the Boo Radleys on EP and a 45 of "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" by Prefab Sprout!

Much fun to be had.

Play of the day

2010-02-12T19:32:00.003Z

[A Doctor's Surgery : The Waiting Room]

A sits still. He is uneasy, but there is nothing obviously wrong with him.

B, dressed in a dark coat, has a cold.

<long pause>

[ends]

Friday 5th February 2010

2010-02-08T22:42:00.002Z

Up, and to the office by train, where all morning doing business. Then dined out for luncheon with Mr Holmes, for it was his birthday, and Miss Theodouru. Then back to the office but little business was to be done and on to The Ship and Shovell and there did drink with some from the office. Then on to my club with Mr Learmonth. He sung well but I had an excess to drink and was engaged in some discourse about music, of which I know little, and then returned home, somewhat the worse for wear, by train. And to bed.

The lost symbol

2010-02-05T17:42:00.002Z

Hello

I've been trying for ages to find a letter that describes the annoying new shape of the transport infrastructure formerly known as "The Circle Line", but I haven't found one yet. It's like a σ, but rotated 90 degrees clockwise, then reflected about the vertical axis.

So far as I can see, no alphabet has a letter that shape. Answers on a postcard please.

Please note

2010-02-04T09:37:00.002Z

"January was rather cold in the UK. But across the whole of the world, January was warmer than usual"

Zero room

2010-02-03T19:43:00.001Z

For a moment, one quiet, eternal moment, perfection. Nothingness. Peace. But it couldn't last.

I managed to totally empty my INBOX. Totally.

It had eight messages in it by the time I left work. I fear I will never capture that perfect tranquility again.

Palmed off

2010-02-02T08:25:00.003Z

We planted the palm tree. It isn't dead yet.

Case study

2010-01-31T22:03:00.002Z

More house stuff I'm afraid.

It's cold. This does not mean anthropogenic climate change isn't happening. It does mean that the poor insulation of our flat is quite apparent.

So, how does one go about improving energy efficiency? I work for the government department responsible, so theoretically it should be straightforward to get it sorted. Theoretically.

Kate found a green concierge service but they don't do it anymore. Tower Hamlets offers interest free loans for energy saving but we can't get on the Warm Front scheme or London Warm Zone scheme, because we aren't on benefits (no dig intended). Tower Hamlets also offers some bloody obvious advice, but no actual information on insulating your fucking home.

The Energy Saving Trust has information of the more useful kind. We have solid walls and they have suggestions. But it doesn't actually go into any detail, doesn't provide costings and while it recommends some products, doesn't offer guidance on which ones are appropriate for you. And they don't list any internal insulation products. Solid wall insulation doesn't even feature as one of the options on their grants and loans list.

The National Insulation Association suggest that the cost of insulating internally is £42 per sq metre, which is so fucking expensive that it's no wonder no one bothers. I mean, seriously, how much is your heating bill? How much of that goes through a single square metre of wall? The payback time is probably 8 centuries.

Does anybody know how to calculate a U value?

Boning up

2010-01-24T22:18:00.002Z

It's all about what, at work, we call "learning by doing". A few weeks ago Kate and I learned how to paint a wall without getting paint on the skirting board, and a skirting board without getting paint on a wall, how to repair cracks in plasterwork, and the difference between primer and undercoat. We also learned, after some trial and error, which paints are soluble in white spirit, and which ones are soluble in meths. It's easier if you just read the side of the tin.

This week we learned that palms need to be planted in plenty of gravel, that olive trees like bonemeal and seaweed extract (which is odd, because I've never seen an olive tree on a beach), that it is possible to get the council to turn the water off but they aren't interested in talking to us, only the plumber (and the plumber isn't keen on talking to them because dealing with the council is ... difficult) and that Morrisey considers "For your pleasure" by Roxy Music the one great British Album. We've also learned how to take bamboo cuttings.

The main question now, is do we paint the spare room like this, this or this? The futon is sort of this colour which is informing our decision. I feel magnolia is a little too timid.

Slow time

2010-01-18T09:39:00.003Z

We have painted a single wall. We now have a futon, as opposed to the bits of futon required to make a futon. In this way, entropy has been defied (not really). But there's still a crack in the wall, the plumbing still needs seeing to and the entire place really needs improved insulation, as this winter has proven.

Keeping a home in good condition is a lot more time consuming that I imagined it would be. What else don't they tell you at school?

More notes

2010-01-10T22:52:00.003Z

CROQUET. NOQUET.

E-in-the-Parks

PICNIC. Parks

Wet - Lamb + Flag

(circled) Henry

---

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

Fleet St, London

Pokey, multi-roomed Sam Smiths Drinking Hole. Worth A Visit @ £.170 a Pint. HEFE-WEISSE Nice Too. Feels Old.

Hot, cold food, sandwiches, tourists and businessmen but not unpleasant. Lack of lighting adds to atmosphere.

---

GET JOB
Neutral ground
Dinner
Bowl
Rome
Calmness

---

Greant Orth Road (This one is definitely Colin)

Sawtry, Batry, Dry Doddington
Are all perhaps present in Long Beddington

I fell asleep in Long Framlington
I drooled in Darrington and Womersley (?)
I came off at Alconbury
I woke up at Tyringhame

[They long for us in Longformans
They do nothing in Cockburnspath]

---

Florence, Urbino, Bologna?

---

Loo roll
Coat hangers
Chip-board

---

(the following my surely be my reaction to the opening session of COP 13 in Bali, 2007. The previous pages date back to 2005, so this is a big jump forward)

Mein Gott. Miming Indonesia pop stars and starletts. Whatever next? I can't imagine Hear'say introducing COP London.

Bali sand (?) 20,000t CO2 this year. 9144 delegates + goodness knows how many press and hangers on have flown here.

I need to do the math to calculate the CO2 emissions from their flights alone.

---

(some notes about the UNFCCC Clean Development Mechanism here, the notes on mitigation policy. This is Oxford 2008 I think)

---

The floor in the lift of this hotel is tiled. The walls are carpeted.

@ dinner last night two white terrires, one with a pink bow, yapped at me while I the down half-heartedly shooed the[m] away.

---

Ends

It's not just us

2010-01-09T13:23:00.001Z

In other countries the transport system breaks down in cold weather.

Brilliant white

2010-01-07T23:02:00.002Z

Well, we have done some painting. It's hardly impressive, in that we have only painted one wall. Which was white. White.

But at least the damp patch is covered and there isn't flaking paint and plaster everywhere and hopefully we did it in such a way that the paint will actually stay on and not flake off. Primer.

And surely if it's that easy to paint a single wall it will be pretty easy to do the whole house, right? How hard can it be?

PS - Wash brushes in warm soapy water.

Holiday!

2010-01-06T23:22:00.002Z

Wowie zowie Oliver Warbucks! A week off! And we haven't even had a week on yet.

Not quite the type of holiday we usually take. For a start, the place we are staying in is rather run down. And Shoreditch isn't my idea of a home away from home. It's more of a 'Working holiday', except without any dry stones walls. Or sheep. Or pubs. OK, we do have pubs. But we aren't drinking this month, respectfully commemorating our livers.

A lot has been achieved, but there is still much to do. To this end we are off to Leyland SDM tomorrow to buy paint and rollers.

Let it snow let it snow let it snow.

The Holy Innocents

2009-12-28T19:12:00.002Z

The bit b'twix St Stephen's and Hogmanay should always be spent thus, drinking G&T and listening to passable Radio 4 Comedy. Oddly, Kate & I haven't watched any TV over this Christmas period. Hopefully this signifies a deep and fulfilling social life. Or summat.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-25T22:28:00.002Z

Hello, and Merry Christmas from Buntingsdale Hall. The fire is flaming, the turkey was scrumptious and the lake frozen.

Wrap-up

2009-12-23T23:19:00.003Z

Hello

I have a cold. Yuk. I couldn't taste a thing at dinner.

I would like to do a wrap up of Copenhagen. I think it was a very important event, and one which both Kate & I, in our own small way, played a part. However, I am still employed by the UK Government as a negotiator, and therefore feel a little restrained in what I can say.

On 31st Jan two things happen. First, the deadline for submission of mitigation actions to be registered under the 'Copenhagen Accord' passes. Second, I finish my current job and move on to something new.

I would beg your indulgence for another month, then.

In the meantime I will take Sudafed and I encourage you to do so, too.

Debugging

2009-12-21T21:48:00.002Z

Hi

Not ready to do a digest on Copenhagen yet. Need distance. That's probably just about as precious as it sounds.

But it's very nice to be back in the real world. Very nice indeed. We did a lovely, dull real world thing, together today. Kate & I fixed our computer.

This involved some complicated(ish) stuff. We opened the command prompt (the older readers may remember MS DOS) and played with 'debug' (which was new to me).

This person suggested we "d C000:0010" which led to us discovering that our video controller was the good old Intel 915G/915GV/910GL chipset. Having obtained the appropriate drivers our new monitor now displays 1440 x 900 resolution, with the added benefit that DVDs now run smoothly.

Next up, the decorating. If we manage to get that done before the East London line reopens we will both be very happy.

Bang!

2009-12-19T10:17:00.002Z

Everyone was in plenary. Turned out I was allowed in too (the first time I had been in the main hall). I wander in, and the Chairman read out, very quickly, the decision and banged his gavel.

Huge round of applause, driven, I think, by the desire for sleep rather than any satisfaction on the actual outcome. So far as I understand it, the Copenhagen 'Accord' is not agreed, merely noted. This is significant. If my understanding is correct, the accord has no legal status.

Ghost town

2009-12-19T08:54:00.003Z

Hi

Well, said Sam, I'm back.

I left the Bella Centre at around 1800 last night, content that negotiations would go long into the night, but that I wouldn't be needed in the slightest. Technology is hardly going to be the deal breaker. And so it proved.

I'll give you an overview of what, if anything, this conference has achieved when it has actually finished. And when a bit of time has allowed me to put things in perspective.

Right now I'm sitting in a virtually abandoned conference centre that looks a bit like the day after Glastonbury, but with less mud and more weirdos. The UK delegation room is locked. Where is everyone?

Locked in a plenary hall, the decision makers are unable to make a decision. I can't get in there, so I'm going to wander around like a tramp and see if I can find some colleagues, or slouch back to my hotel and check out.

Thanks to Kate, for writing a blog that actually looked like a blog. Normal service resumed next week.

2009-12-18T10:01:00.004Z

Hi, Kate here, this will be my final guest blog post. Hopefully James will step in in a day or two with an analysis of whatever on earth comes out of this process.

I'm back in Copenhagen, with helicopters circling the Bella Center and security people of all description everywhere. (And may I just say that providing outside security for a building in a Danish snowstorm is not a great job, I hope these people get paid enough.) My colleague on the inside had a great time yesterday seeing some of the head-of-state speeches, but all the real work was going on behind the scenes where no observers may enter.

There is now no pretence of anyone getting any sleep, talks have been constant. Apparently more progress has been made in the last 12 hours than in many days preceding, but there are many issues unresolved and right now it is not clear how this conference will end. There is a widespread feeling of amazement and incomprehension that things could have come to this pass after so many days, weeks, months of preparation. Those of you who try to make social arrangements with James will be aware how often he has been away this year at EU or international meetings, adding up in total to somewhere between two and three entire months out of 2009. The same goes for every one of hundreds of international negotiators at these talks. Yet heads of state who are here to sign a document are finding that the text has massive gaps in it and that positions on some issues are still miles away from each other.

The rather dramatic stepping-up of the helicopter presence is doubtless something to do with the fact that Obama is here. The poor man is expected to step in like Superman and resolve all the issues. I wish him well.

Back in the domestic sphere I pootled around at some climate change events in the morning. In the afternoon, after realising that it would cost £900 to fly out of Malmo at this notice, I mounted Escape from Sweden for myself, my luggage and James' luggage before they really did close the bridge. Unlike Escape from New York or LA this simply meant spending a lot of time in snowstorms, and trying to avert wrath on overstuffed delayed trains for being the annoying person travelling with two giant suitcases. The sniffer dogs that are now active on the trains showed no interest in our bags. James managed to effect a brief exit from the Bella Center to pick his up, then dived back in to continue talks. Both of us will be coming home tomorrow, hurrah.

Thank you very much for reading (if you are) and I hereby hand you back to this blog's owner.

2009-12-17T08:38:00.004Z

Well, where do I start today? Two full days to go and things just get weirder. First up - negotiation progress. My first text of the morning from my dearly beloved c.9.30am, says: "No news here. Feels bad...". Negotiation sessions were running all through the night, as they were also on Tuesday night. Did I mention that one of the main sessions on Tuesday started at 4.50am?

I haven't actually seen the man for quite some time. Just as my train was pulling into Malmo last night he called to say that the bridge to Denmark was going to be shut for security reasons so he had been posted back to the hotel in Copenhagen (and would anyway be in the conference centre for the foreseeable future). This left me trapped in Sweden! Luckily for me the other hotel booking still stands so here I am.

Meanwhile, intense negotiations between NGOs and the conference organisers finally came to a conclusion at midnight last night. 300 named NGO observers would be allowed into the conference centre on Thursay and Friday. My organisation was allocated 1 non-transferable place and I had to submit the name by 5am (see above, these people are simply not sleeping.) I decided to allocate this to one of my delegation who had expressed a strong interest in getting a place. She got the pass, and also got one of the very few plenary passes which means that she'll be able to watch Obama et al in the flesh. Many thousands of other registered NGO observers are totally out in the cold so we have been very lucky indeed.

This morning I am delighted that we are in, but sad not to be there myself especially as it turns out that the bridge to Denmark is open today (although it really will be shutting tomorrow) so I could have taken the place myself which is a bit gutting. However I am glad my colleague is getting the opportunity. I am trying to decide what to do myself, I think I will go into Copenhagen today as there are various events on and a few colleagues still around, but might leave tomorrow. So this is probably a near-final post.

Finally I would just say that reading the online news about yesterday's demo, arrests, violence etc was very strange when I had been right there and not seen a thing beyond a few shouty people inside the conference centre. It really illustrates how hard it is to do a direct action that is actually visible/audible to the Heads of State. Perhaps online petitions etc are more effective since at least they'll (presumably) at least register on the radar when they are considering their public mandate for negotiating positions. Suspect James would be able to say more on this.

2009-12-16T15:58:00.003Z

Hello, still Kate. Everything is confusing today. Heads of state are here and security has gone up ten notches. Most of my delegation who are here this week never got to use the secondary pass system as they could not get their primary passes due to long queues. NGO delegates are not allowed to enter the area where heads of state are speaking and even governments are allowed a small number of passes. And now there is a tertiary pass system for tomorrow which will only allow a tiny minority of NGO delegates into any part of the conference venue as observers. My organisation ran its final two events yesterday so those of us who managed to get in are now pretty much giving up and going home. Our exhibit stand is already boxed up and sent to the couriers since I doubt we'll get back in until late Saturday or Sunday (when I plan to be gone, gone, gone).

So what I hear you cry, we want to know about the negotiations. Well as I said in one of my earlier posts you will get better news from the BBC than from us in this rather chaotic heart-of storm. All we know is what the person next in line in the lunch queue tells us. One minute it's failing, the next there will definitely be an agreement, the next it has gone all wobbly again. I was privileged to spend enough time to have a conversation with my husband last night (as he was negotiating until small hours for several nights previously), he tells me that from where he is sitting everything is completely opaque. The deal-making is now at such a high level that although he knows where the issues have got to in his area, he has no idea how this is being played and bargained with by the top negotiators. He was meant to text me hours ago to say whether he'd be asked to stay to the end of the talks or not, I have received nothing which I suspect means that this is still not clear. So perhaps we will both come home early.

There was a massive demonstration outside today which meant we were sealed into the Bella Center for quite some time. Again, my main news on this was from the BBC and Guardian websites, in fact you would never know from here that there was anything going on out there. There has been a small amount of sympathetic demonstration on the inside, in particular some effective heckling from outside the high-level plenary which is audible in the film footage from the inside. And by the way, if you are truly interested there is pretty good coverage on the UNFCCC website including live streaming from the head-of-state plenary that we are not allowed into!

2009-12-14T23:45:00.004Z

Evening all. This is still Kate guest-blogging by the way. You are not likely to hear from James for some time. In fact I will quote you a text exchange that we had a mere 30 minutes ago, at approx 11.30pm CET on Monday night:

James: " Will be here very very late"
Kate: "Hi, on train home"
James: "I love you. See you... Wednesday?"

So as you can see from the above the (remaining) negotiators are holed up in little rooms trying desperately to overcome the G77 walkout from talks, and to get something together before 100+ heads of state arrive in about 24 hours.

Meanwhile, in NGO world, I have run 3 side events in 4 days and have sleep deprivation. Also half my delegation went home over the weekend and another half arrived. This second half tried to register today, unfortunately the registration system collapsed causing a large crowd (including several of my poor little chicks) to spend 9 hours outside in freezing conditions, hemmed in by Danish police without food or water, and not even managing to get a pass at the end of it. This is before we even go into the NGO secondary pass system (the 'tickets' I mentioned in previous posts) which starts tomorrow and could hardly cause any more chaos than already exists.

Gordon Brown has decided to fly in early which is probably a good thing given the state things are in. A minor side effect is that due to the need to screen the UK delegation hotel for (bugs? bombs?) James has been shunted out to Malmo. Yes, that is in a different country. We dithered about whether to move into some of my organisation's accommodation in outer Copenhagen instead (there's a spare room this week) but in the end decided to go with Malmo since the commute is actually not that different. Oddly, Sweden is a lot cheaper than Denmark. We suspect that office workers take the train out here at lunchtime to buy their sandwiches.

2009-12-11T06:44:00.003Z

Last night over drinks a government delegate (not UK) gave me an explanation of the row I mentioned in the last post that conspiracy theorists would love, roughly along the lines of Syriana crossed with The Business. I had gone to bed when James came in from his own negotiations at 1am. I asked him if he thought it was true. He said no. Then he said, "I have been talking to the Argentinians until midnight, I can't talk to you now" and went to sleep.

Sadly that was only 7 hours ago, I am back here in the Bella Center ridiculously early. It's going to be a busy day for me so thought I might as well post now. My NGO has quite a few delegates here now and we are hosting a number of events in quick succession between now and Tuesday, it's all getting a bit hectic.

2009-12-10T12:20:00.004Z

It's all a bit quiet here, Connie Hedegaard (Danish Climate & Energy Minister) just had to shut down one of the main negotiating sessions because consensus was proving impossible. I saw her do this on the TV screens but had not been watching the entire session, however I think the cause was the same issue that shut down talks yesterday. Tuvalu + others and Saudi Arabia + others are having a bust-up over whether it is better to continue the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 or write a new treaty. Usually the G77 (i.e. developing) countries negotiate in one bloc, this split is an interesting development with lots of pros and cons for the prospects of getting a deal.

The Bella Center is virtually at capacity now. The proposed access restrictions are likely to start soon, apparently each NGO is likely to each get tickets to cover 30% of its delegation. While this is not music to my ears I expect it is a bit of a relief to the government delegates, they will be tripping over a few less youth and polar bears on the way to their meetings. One of the UNFCCC Secretariat staff said to me on Tuesday as we walked through the NGO exhibit area, "it's getting like a street market in Bangkok".

2009-12-09T19:20:00.004Z

The main debate among gossipers of all stripes last night and this morning was - who leaked the Danish paper, and why? You might have seen this story in the Guardian. Denmark has been leading a process of writing a parallel text for a Global Deal that can be whipped out at that last minute if things get sticky.

Seasoned observers here are pointing out that this is perfectly normal, and it's traditional for COP Presidents to have something up their sleeves, some have also said that the content doesn't deviate much from principles set out recently by the head of UNFCCC. But you wouldn't know that from the news coverage. A few people have mentioned that there is a precedent for a similar paper being leaked at such an early stage, that was in The Hague in 2000 and the talks failed partly (it is said) as a result. An alternative theory is that there is some devilishly clever media management strategy going on.

In other news, I have now seen people dressed up as trees, people dressed up as aliens and many people in colourful national dress of all kinds. Plus lots of "youth" (this is actually the official term, there are "youth delegations" here) wearing t-shirts saying 'How old will you be in 2050?', to which my answer is 'A lady never tells'. Despite the cold, the conference metro station is permanently surrounded by happy devotees of the Grand Master something or other who are promoting veganism and have a poster with a picture of a goat saying, "Don't eat them, they love you."

I would love to give you news of James, but I think I have seen him (awake) for about 1 hour in the last 48.

2009-12-07T16:04:00.003Z

Well, I found the brochures, the registration queue is 4 hours long and some of my delegates are still in it, and given that we are surely approaching 15,000 delegates registered today the dreaded NGO ticketing system looks likely to be implemented. Boo. On the negotiations side there is a fair bit of gossip flying about regarding progress, much of which doesn't actually need repeating here since it is captured pretty well on this BBC blog. I'm not sure I can compete with that. Not a peep from James, which means that he is up to his eyeballs in meetings.

2009-12-06T23:19:00.004Z

Hello, this is Kate. I'm with James at Copenhagen (I am co-ordinating the activities of the NGO I work for, which is an official observer to the talks) and since he's not allowed to talk about what's going on I thought I might offer the odd update for interested parties. He has been in meetings all day (UK, EU, EU + others) whereas I have been setting up my organisation's exhibit stand and discovering that all our boxes of brochures are missing in the aether somewhere. Judging by the number of people already in the conference venue today, the official opening tomorrow is going to be carnage with registration queues half way to Sweden. NGO passes are likely to be rationed on a ticketing system where we get less than our total number of delegates, which is going to be quite interesting to co-ordinate (and alas this is my job) as you can bet that the people holding the tickets on any given day will go awol or drop them in a Danish puddle somewhere so that they can't be used by the next people on the next day. The venue holds 15,000 and apparently there are 27,000 who want to get on the list and can't. There are more press than government officials. Etc. James says, "It appears that no-one whatsoever knows what is going to happen."

Somewhere else

2009-12-03T18:55:00.001Z

Hello

Tomorrow I shall find myself elsewhere. Thankfully, Kate join me elsewhere on Saturday.

Will try to post some impressions on how things are going.