The great British Novella

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

There's no action

More notes

CROQUET. NOQUET.

E-in-the-Parks

PICNIC. Parks

Wet - Lamb + Flag

(circled) Henry

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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.

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GET JOB
Neutral ground
Dinner
Bowl
Rome
Calmness

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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]

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Florence, Urbino, Bologna?

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Loo roll
Coat hangers
Chip-board

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(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.

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

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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.

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Ends

The story of the Brass Shark

In the mid-1500s Vienna was plagued by regular summer infestations of lobsters which caused significant damage to local buildings and livestock. In '57 the Mayor, Hans Übermann, commissioned Lazansky von Bukowa (Great^5 grandfather of Joseph Haydn) to come up with a solution and the famous Viennese polymath did not disappoint, designing and building a 15 foot long coal powered shark made entirely of brass.

Sadly, 15th century control systems were not of a sophisticated type, and shortly after launch the shark went haywire, attacking shipping in the Danube and causing severe losses to the merchant fleet. The shark could not be caught using conventional nets, which it bit through, and a harpoon squadron bought in by the mayor failed the make any impression on its brass hide. von Bukowa had fled to a monastery in disgrace, but returned to the city in the autumn when the mayor begged him to find a way to capture or destroy his creation.

By coating a large fishing net with a viscous mixture of honey and candle-wax, von Bukowa was able to produce a trap sticky enough to trap his mechanical selachimorpha and was able to dismantle it on the deck of the vessel Pride of Urbino. He received 12 shillings for his efforts, though never the freedom of the city (which many believe was denied to him by a furious Guildhall, many of the Members of which has suffered damages from attack by the shark)

Curiously enough, the lobsters never again threatened Vienna, probably because the mechanical fish had caused them to flee for safer waters.

Lost notes

My life, at work, runs through Outlook. E-mail. Meeting requests. Telephone numbers.

My Outlook is broken. There's a man in a room far away, magically moving the pointer on my laptop, desperately seeking a solution. I wish him luck.

So what to do?

You can't but fail to notice, if you stroll by my desk (though what you would be doing in Ergon House, Westminster is beyond my imagining) that the place is stacked high with unread reports, unloved arch-files and uncapped felt-tip pens. It is time for a clean up.

I've found some torn of bits of notepad from Kenya. The great undiscovered novel? I fear not.

God is Abce (?. not sure about this one. It seems to be in someone else's handwriting)

Lions don't care
A baboon stole my ketchup.
Africa is hot + wet
Elephants, reticulated giraffe, buffalo that won't mate, baboons, black faced monkeys

Africa is very muddy and Kenya is very green. Suprisingly like England in the Highlands, with retangular pastures though the animals are different

Stopped and 6 guys run up to us w/ fresh catfish (whole). Cook buys one and we travel onwards (I remember the Cook's name was Matthew. He was incredible. Could knock up a feast, even in the wilderness) Also bought illegal charcoal (not us, the Cook) from nomads. You have to plant two trees for everyone you cut down.

Roads switch from supoth (?) to disintigrating, seemingly a random. (Truly, I have never expereinced anything like a Kenya 'road' and it remains the abiding memory of the trip. Even more vivd that the lions shagging in front of our truck. Drivers prefer to drive off-road along many stretches)

Rural store-fronts are brightly branded

"Mighty meaty" "Ever Ready" "Safari Com Cell Phones" "Men who Care Pumbers Merchants" Comman usage is bar/butchers (by which I think I meant that many shops combine those two services in the same building, indeed, in the same room)

Baboons by the roadside.

Flamingos + flamingo carcasses.

As black as a shit pit (that's one of Steve's, I'm sure)

That's all.

Dostoevsky I'm not.