When reading habits take a hold

I must be over the hill: while Seamus McCauley has the ability to keep track in his head of which page he has reached in his current book. I find I have trouble keeping track of which book it even was.

To be honest: marking-the-right-book is the real purpose of my Kandinsky postcard sticking out from behind the cover, because it never marks the right page (how can it when I have fallen alseep the previous evening, slumped drunk exhausted in my armchair, the book sliding to the floor ?)

With nothing to mark my place, my page-finding strategy, each evening when I resume duty, is to locate where the book naturally falls open (I admit it: I am a creaser and spine breaker) and then turn back a few pages until I find something I can remember and then re-commence from there.

Alas, this strategy is flawed and can prevent me from ever reaching the end of a dullish book - indeed I habitually go backwards as with half a book completed and enthusiasm waning, I turn eight-or-ten pages back hunting for the familiar before re-reading just six-or-seven pages forward and then falling asleep all over again.

I must possess at least a dozen books where I have read chapters 1-7 quite quickly, then most of chapter 8 five times before abandoning the book when re-encountering chapter 7 a second time from the opposite direction.

Perhaps I should get a Kindle.

But I worry that the systematic, ungamable organisation of a Kindle might shame me out of ever abandoning a book again: Do I want waste my life plodding through all those dreadful chapters 9 to 15?

A Week in May

Twickenham, May 2010

Church St, Twickenham by Maxwell Hamilton

The last two weekends of May were dominated by rugby at the stadium: a weekend of Sevens, the Premiership Final and England v Barbarians combined to jam up the town for four whole days: an insouciant breach of the covenant of trust that the RFU owes its neighbours. Exacerbating the annoyance: on the last afternoon unfamiliar and uncertain traffic police were drafted in from North London and proved cluelessly bereft of common sense: despite the street being completely clear five mins after the kick off they refused to open the road; I phoned Control there and then and told them I was hemmed in by numpties. "There's no need to be rude to me Sir' said the closest numpty, mildly, "and I'm definitely not letting you through now."

The crowds reached 80,000 and some friends of ours who live on the main drag made thousands selling homemade cakes to the crowds from their front garden.

*****

Across the road from us lives Alice. She and her husband bought her house just before the war, new from the builder, for about £300. Just a short time later her husband volunteered, went off to fight and, missing in action, he never came home. She waited through four years of war and then another four years of peace before, losing hope, she declared him dead and she told me that because of the delay she never got the letter from the King that other war-widows received.

Alice never wanted to live on the Middlesex side of the river, but that was what they could afford and there she has stayed, alone but certainly not friendless, for seventy-two years. She is deaf and sleepless and now that the weather is warm and windows are open at night, her radio - talk, not music - wakes me up in small, still hours between 1 and 3; Sometimes it's loud enough for me to even make out the words.

I asked her about the rugby crowds and did they bother her? She said I shouldn't complain, sixty years ago the stadium held 100,000, and anyway it is all much better policed nowadays

*****

Every Sunday morning my mates and I go cycling. The bright warm early morning Sundays in May are the perfect-weather highlight of our year and those weeks we go further.   On the last Sunday in May we rode a sweeping circle, never more than ten miles from home, taking in two grand country houses (Syon and Osterley) several miles of the Grand Union Canal and the River Brent, as well as the London Air Parks in Hanworth where a Zeppelin landed in 1936, and the old Feltham Marshalling yards where steam trains once met and were divided and restacked.

A puncture and a canal-path diversion for a broken bridge delayed us and we were out for two hours; half a mile from home my friend Karl peeled off sprinting for the local church where his bell, and seven impatient bell ringers awaited him (when he got there they had gone).  His church are running a £14,000pa deficit (the vicar says on her blog) despite making lots of money out of the rugby crowds - car parking. The last two weekends in May - with four games! - were especially profitable.

*****

Our entrepreneurial friends on the road to the stadium had a fiftieth birthday and we were invited for drinks and smoked salmon with sour cream on blini (when I was young smoked salmon came on crustless triangles of buttered brown bread, when did that change?) . At the party was a slightly-well-known Twickenham based actor who is currently appearing in the West End. Tall, blond and striking, she dominated the small back room and the assembled company; Mrs Botogol and I affected not to recognise her, but other guests were fawning and politely praised her work; she beamed.  I dropped the name of an even more famous Twickenham-based actor - whom we know from school, and was rewarded by a momentary frown across her peach-perfect brow. I am a git.

Fetching another canapé from the kitchen I introduced myself to our hosts' next door neighbour, who was hovering shyly near the red wine. He told me he had lived in his house, alone, for almost sixty years. I asked him if Twickenham had changed in all that time. "Not a bit", he said, happily, "Not a bit". I wondered if he knew Alice, who has lived no more than two hundred metres away from him, for all that time.
They've never met.

Orderly queues, human encounters and women of a certain age

Two weeks ago

pic by Seventh Continent

A woman of a certain age (well my age really) intercepted me as I joined the cloakroom queue after Marcus de Sautoy's maths lecture in the RGS. She smiled at me and, uncertain what do in this unexpected situation, I smiled back.

"Did you enjoy the talk?", she asked me, being careful to let me see her pretextual cloakroom ticket.

"I think he's very good", she continued before I had time to answer, "I liked what he said about the Goldbach conjecture"

A woman interested in the Goldbach conjecture! Score 5 points.

"I did like his talk", I said, "it was very well constructed, and the 'sleight of hand' he admitted to was actually quite fun"

"Oh, I didn't even notice that!", she laughed

A woman pretending to be less intelligent than she is. Score -5

She smiled again and we retrieved our coats, and went our separate ways.


Saturday

A woman of a certain age (well, my age really) intercepted me in the queue to record finish times at the Bushy Park Run.

"Would, you mind? could I ask you to help..I..."

She turned round and showed me the problem: the inner pocket of her lycra shorts was tangled and she couldn't get at the contents.  Somewhat gingerly I fished inside and freed the car key I could see poking out.

"Thanks" she said, "but it's my registration card I need - that's stuck in there as well."

Never let it be said that Alibert Botogol fails to rise to an occasion:  I tried again with more vigour, but the little bit of crumpled plastic was somehow bound tight with lycra and surprisingly hard to extract

"How deep should I delve?" I asked, after a moment

"You're doing fine", she said and I tussled some more;  eventually I freed the damn thing and handed it to her.

She smiled and thanked me

"Have you ever heard of the Goldbach Conjecture?", I asked?

I am not a number, I am a free man

These are the Big Five: the five dimensions of personality by which many psychs would take your measure:

The rich pattern of life's tapestry

Openness - appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience.

Conscientiousness - a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behavior.

Extraversion - energy, positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek stimulation and the company of others.

Agreeableness - a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.

Neuroticism - a tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability; sometimes called emotional instability.

You could score a person for each one, on a scale from 0 to 9, and create a five digit number that defines them. Perhaps we could all have our number tattooed on our forehead; or something; and understand each other better. Get back to your oar, 93517, and don't come back until you are more agreeable.

Or turn it into an after-dinner parlour game... who are the following numbers? I should patent the idea.

One Friday, last month

Looking back, I had felt weird all afternoon.

Not due at the restaurant until 7.30pm nevertheless, bored silly, I left work at five and took the tube to London Bridge from where I wandered, against the flow of the crowd, through the closing-up remains of Borough market and out on to the South Bank.

It was autumn-chilly, but I wasn't cold and I pushed on past the Golden Hind, Vinopolis, Clink Street, the Globe and to a bank building where in 1996 I had worked for over a year as a consultant and where, now, I paused and stared into the windows trying to catch a glimpse of my former life.

When I reached Tate Modern I calculated I had still an hour to kill and so I went inside, vaguely in search of a Kandinsky, vaguely in search of a surprise and a few minutes later ventured, intrigued and hesitant, into How It Is, an enormous dark steel box that occupies the Turbine Hall. Completely dark, but clanking and echoing with the footsteps of others, and with whispers echoing from within, I felt not alone but disconnected : It was uncomfortable although not scary, disorientating but not debilitating and it was impossible to perceive how many people were inside with me. I was glad, when I turned around, to find that the way out was clear and obvious.

At the entrance to the box stood two identical twins in identical bright scarlet dresses, and identical ribbons in their hair, talking to a curious young man, and I thought I heard one say, quite distinctly: "Actually, we're an exhibit".  At the time it made no sense at all.

They did have a Kandinsky, though it took a moment  for I didn't immediately recognise it as one of his: Lake Starnberg: a confusing, false colour view of an autumnal Switzerland.

I scurried away, glad to be outside, and hurried to Waterloo.

By the time I reached the restaurant it was raining and it felt like a long time since I had left Canary Wharf. We were eating with another family, a birthday treat. Greasy antipasti and two cool beers later I felt the warm excitement of a Friday evening but the restaurant was windowless and too dark and it was hot and noisy. The antipasti was filling and the beer was cool and when my cheeseburger came I chewed a couple of mouthfuls and suddenly I needed to stand up very quickly.

And then I was back inside the steel box, but now the Kandinsky was there as well, and the colours brighter but it still it made no sense, and this time I could tell there were lots of other people there, and far away I heard someone shout "My goodness! - it's Alibert" and I laughed.



And then I was standing at the other end of the restaurant, leaning against a counter and a worried-looking Mrs Botogol was there with me, staring.

"You fainted", she said, "How long were you out for?" and I could only think "I'm supposed to ask that" and it wasn't fair, and I had no answer and so, for quite a few moments, I didn't say anything at all.

Heffalump's Footsteps

Walking to work last week in the low, dazzling September exalting in the cool, milky autumn air; I was juggling my mp3 player, my newspaper, my blackberry, my phone and my old-man glasses when the phone rang.

Parallel Worlds by alicepopkorn ( in and out )

Glancing at the display I was nonplussed to see who was calling for there on the screen was flashing  Alibert Botogol [Work]

Now, I've seen an episode or two of Dr Who in my time, so I knew pretty much what to expect: most likely my alter ego from a parallel universe was taking advantage of a tiny wormhole in the space-time continuum to place a call to summon my assistance with a problem that was threatening the security of the entire multiverse.

Either that or someone was burgling my office, had found my address book, and was having a laugh at my expense.

Not sure which prospect was the more frightening and full of curiosity but not without hesitation, and somewhat gingerly, I took the call.

"Hello, Alibert Botogol speaking?", I said just as the person at the other end said exactly the same thing. "Hello? Hello?" we both continued,  talking over each other, until, spooked, I fell silent. So did the other guy.... I waited, coolly....

...until a tiny squeal from my pocket distracted me and I fished out of my jacket... my blackberry. I must have forgotten to lock the keys when I stuffed it away for it seemed to be making a phone call.....

On Camber Sands...

picture by Hiddenson

..we could connect nothing with nothing.

Actually, it wasn't that bad: we made a pretty good hash of our Fibonacci spiral.

We had a 30m line and a stick and we worked out an effective MO: one of us at the action end applying a considerable centrifugal force to drag a tethered stick through the heavy, wet sand to mark out the sections of the spiral, the other at the centre playing the important role of 'dead weight' : anchoring the line and encouraging the hapless scribe: "keep it taut! keep it taut!"


We constructed 10  sections, the last with a radius of about 25metres, marking out, then, a pitch of about 500m²
  
The beach rangers didn't like it all. "We don't like it at all", they said, dismounting from their landrover. "What is this about and can we please see your CRB certificates"

"It's a Fibonacci Spiral", I said, "constrructed from a famous sequence of numbers discovered by Leonardo of Pisa, son of Bonacci, and often, it turns out, found in nature, defined as F(n) = F(n-1) + F(n-2), Pete! Keep it Taut!"

"And with the ratio of successive terms tends toward the Golden Section!", exclaimed the young beach warden, relaxing, "That's OK - we were worried that you were doing something irregular".

amusing but spiteful

Every so often at work they invite external speakers, successful in their chosen fields, to inspire us with their ideas, experiences and achievements

A New Dawn by Thomas Hawk

There are canapés, and I always attend.

Last week the speaker was an entrepreneur venture capitalist. No, not one of the ones on Dragon's Den, but if you are the sort of person who could name five entrepreneur venture capitalists, then perhaps you would have heard of him.

His messages were simple, and they were simply told and there were two:

Lesson the first: Perseverance.

It is perseverance, he said, that creates 'so called luck' and in particular luck is created by being out and about and connecting with people - people who have ideas, or who might be able to help you.

Sitting eight rows back I shifted uncomfortably in my seat with the realisation that every single one of the entrepreneurs who have come to speak to us have given us pretty much that same message.

And then, because I am British and not American and therefore value cynicism over optimism, I thought of all the entrepreneurs out there who have not yet persevered long enough to create their luck and have not been invited to speak to us at work

Lesson the second: - Adaptability

If you have an idea you will face setbacks. You need to constantly reassess: you must ask yourself  "Do I have a good idea?" and if you do have good idea then see 1) Perseverance. But also see 2) Adaptability, lest your idea is good one but your approach is wrong.

For sometimes you might open the doors of the room that contains your idea and stride in expecting a ballroom but find yourself in a cupboard. This doesn't make it a bad idea, just a cupboard-sized idea. Or perhaps you have an idea the size of a cupboard and open the doors to find yourself in a ballroom?  Whatever: Either way you need to recognise and adapt.

Now, as well as being a cynic I am also a pragmatist, and I did like that.


Afterwards over canapés I encountered a colleague I hadn't seen for a while and James and I spent a happy glass of wine or so picking over Project Phoenix until we were disconcerted by the organiser of the event, a senior executive normally to be found on the 27th floor, who came smoothly over to shake our hands and ask us who we were and what we thought of the speaker.

Never too shy to express an opinion I said that I thought our speaker was entertaining and engaging and, I judged, in the top quartile of recent speakers.  Indeed, I continued, sipping some more Chardonnay, remembering previous speakers, and warming to my theme, "on a scale of " gesturing now, hand at knee level, I named a famous chef, to (reaching high in the the air), a famous businessman,  "he was about here" (armpit).

I was rather pleased with my improvised bon mot / bon mime, but as the VIP excused himself and hurried away I reflected how no one likes a smart arse, and that unconventional is rarely clever.

Of course I should have come up with something much blander, something more right-thinking, something interior-decorated that surrendered self in favour of conformity. Or more cleverly still, something that drew attention to the quality of my interlocutor's speech of introduction, rather than to my own amusing but spiteful glibness. Lesson the third - diplomacy.

On the other hand James choked on his canapé and said 'good one' so it was a quip not entirely wasted.

All the same I was glad I had given a false name.

I see ghosts

My Ghost by piccadillywilson

How might you know if you are a brain in a vat? Short of being able to order up a useful mind-focussing, clarity inducing red pill, on the internet, that is.

One clue that might lead you to believe your life was a scripted simulation might be the sudden emergence of new themes, or abrupt changes in your story - as unseen undergraduate experimenters move on to a new module in their degree course and devise a new set of experiments for their imprisoned but unaware and virtual subject.

Has your life suddenly become dangerous?  Is everything recently very French? Are you encountering purple vegetables with worrying regularity?

In my case I am being tortured by frequent encounters with co-workers from my old consultant days.

They are everywhere.

Encountering two in a Canary Wharf wine bar last month was unremarkable happenstance; meeting a third at a mini-rugby festival felt like coincidence, but when I noticed fourth ex-co-worker running on my shoulder at the Richmond Park 5k  I suddenly suspected enemy action

By now I was even beginning to recognise them and recall their names. (Somewhere a tentacled hand pressed pause and made a note of my pleasing progress)

So, when a fifth ex-colleague phoned me up out of the blue last month to ask me for coffee, and then a sixth turned up at in a meeting at work I wasn't even surprised. "I've been expecting you" was my (slighty unusual) opening conversational gambit but she wasn't thrown (they're good, the holo-deck programmers, they're very good) and somewhere far away someone decided turned up the heat a bit "I know! How about giving him a an alumni reunion?" and lo, I have been to two such occasions in a fortnight.

I see ghosts, I see them all the time. And last night I saw very many of them. And if the spectres of age, and the credit-crunch and a sense that things could have been different, if those spectres were also there, and they haunted us, well, we didn't let it show for there was free wine and canapes.

It had been ten years since I last saw David and it's been fifteen years since we worked together in a city in Africa, and it was good to see him again, and when everyone else had gone we stayed and we reminisced about old friends and narrow escapes, sale pitches won and lost, clients satisfied and upset and do-you-remember-whens, when suddenly it hit me

"You know, David", I said, "you know - we used to be friends didn't we" and he laughed, "Yes Alibert, so we did".

Since I last saw him he had found time to get married and father an eight year old - and I didn't even know.

"Have you been to many other reunions lately?", I asked; and he looked at me strangely.

Speaking in a different voice

"From time to time in the execution of Project Phoenix", said the email, "it's necessary for the Planning and Administration Department to form an definitive view"

Well, now, I work on Project Phoenix, and I can confirm entirely without equivocation that, from time time, it is indeed necessary for the Planning and Administration Dept to form a definitive view. Oh yes indeedy: it most certainly is.

So, I unplugged my mp3, shut down my browser and paid attention.
.
"Accordingly, the purpose of this email is to confirm that within the context of Project Phoenix George Dylan will act, when needed, as the official voice of PAD"

Naturally I picked up the phone and called George directly. "Congratulations, George, and all that... and I have a question:  How will we know, George, on any particular occasion, whether you are speaking with your official voice, or whether you are just making up as you go along like you normally do?"

Mind, I wasn't being flippant, for the official voice is a very subtle and important concept.

Here is Oswald Bates on this very subject, as he confronts his corporate nemesis...

(The relevant bit for this post from 2:30 to 2:50, but trust me: if you watch the whole 5 minutes you won't regret it)

(From Stephen Polliakoff's timeless and extraordinary drama Shooting the Past)

And here is Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) who can recognise the 'voice' when he hears it.

You see: very often in the corporate world it is exactly the case that for the truth to heard it must be spoken in the right voice, at the right time, and by the right person. Get it right and you're a guru, a truthsayer, a seer and a leader of men.  But time it wrong, phrase it wrong, use the wrong voice and you're a trouble maker.  Oswald is a trouble maker - an entirely correct trouble maker - who knows he is right and even knows about the 'voice' but yet he doesn't have it.

Neither does poor George

"Don't be silly, Alibert" he told me, "are you expecting me to speak more deeply? Ha Ha, no, of course not, you'll know because of WHAT I am saying, not the manner in which I say it".

Of course we will, George.

--------------

Over in Brussels this week an obscure MEP called Daniel Hannan in a quite brilliant three minute speech absolutely speared Gordon Brown who I don't think has experienced anyone speaking to him like this for years.

This video went viral and was the most-watched video on YouTube on Wednesday..

It isn't even anything new: we've heard it before and we all know it to be true,  but this is first time we have heard it said in a the right voice..

Who thought oratory was dead?

New Year Makeovers & What We Are.

Just like John Thain, I have redecorated.

He spent $1,200,000 on his office; I can report, dear reader,  that on my cubicle I spent less: Approximately $1,199,985 less.

Thain's centrepiece was a stupidly-expensive designer rug, purchased solely to demonstrate his wealth and power  (only a banker could do that, right?)  My centrepiece was some new art postcards from the National Gallery, which I blu-tacked onto the glass partition between myself and my neighbour to allow me to surf the internet undetected improve our mutual privacy.

Thain was sacked. But even so, I guess he won't have to worry about his pension like I do. Oh well.


New Years Resolutions - because We are what we repeatedly do.


This year I have stolen three themes from older, wiser friends, who know better.

Theme - learn moderation, not abstinence

• in drink: to drink with friends and loved ones not with clients or co-workers, to oil a conversation not to wash down a plate of pasta, to accompany a smoked salmon blini, not Trial and Retribution
  
• food: to eat three meals a day not four (or two). To be able to tell whether I am hungry and if I'm not, to stop eating. At all costs to avoid canapés.

Theme - to OCD only the good habits (because it's hard when a habit takes a hold)

• to weigh myself once a week, exercise five times - and blog twice
  
• to have breakfast with my children every Wednesday -  whether they like it or not
• to be nicer to Mrs Botogol
  

Theme - to have more human contact at work

• fewer emails, more phone calls
  
• seek out Kate, whomsever she is
  
• find out the name of the youtube, Ocado and google-news fanatic in the next door cubicle. I mean - why not? after all these years...
  

Meanwhile... at work 

In our secret santa  last month an anonymous co-worker bought me a book of art pictures. It turned out to contain two of the postcards I have on my cubicle wall.

My first thought was "That is an unusual present for a secret santa" 
My second thought was: "Ah, I can see why they bought this: just because I have art postcards on my cubicle wall they think I am some kind of arty-type of person"
My third thought was "But I do have art postcards on my cubicle wall.... perhaps I am some kind of arty-type person"

What we actually are.

We are what we hang on our cubicle walls.

Random Connections

Connections by alles-schlumpf

[There now follows a geek interlude. Normal service will be resumed in the next post]

When I see something interesting on the internet I post a link to it on the sidebar here on my blog ¹ . Most days I post two or three links for delight of my readers who have all - so far as I can tell - entirely failed to notice.

The good news is I can do this in just a couple of clicks using delicious, which is a cool tool: for one thing: when you make a link you can see who else has bookmarked the same page, and then click through to see what else they have marked and if they are interesting you can add them to your 'network'.

So, wouldn't it be interesting, I idly thought one day, if there was a tool to search all of delicious and find users with similar bookmarks?   A cyberfriend-finder, no less.

Well, if you have an idea nowadays you can bet your IP-Address that someone else has had it first first and sure enough, after three minutes googling, I find myself on this website, which turns out to belong to one  andreas.s  - who is (drum-roll) one of only four people already in my delicious network.

Spooky eh?



So, now you are asking:  OK, then, Alibert, go on (sigh)  so which delicious user does share the largest number of wierd, random bookmarks with you, then?  And where can I find his blog? Perhaps he's writing about something more interesting today.

Well, using this cool tool  I found someone: he has bookmarked 604 sites - I have 900 -  and between us we have (drumroll, drumroll) no fewer than 12 bookmarks in common.

He is  Matthew Paul Hansen  - and he doesn't list any contact details but if he uses google alerts on his own name (and doesn't everyone) then I imagine he'll be along shortly.


--------------
¹ Over there, on the right,  "Seen Elsewhere", see it?

He Sings the Songs that Remind Him Of The Good Times

picture by MatthewBradley

From: YouTube [mailto:no_reply@youtube.com]

Sent: 21 November 2008 03:18

To: botogol

Subject: A copyright owner has claimed content in one of your videos

Dear botogol,

Video Disabled A copyright owner has claimed it owns some or all of the audio content in your video TRFC U9 Rugby.

The audio content identified in your video is Tubthumping by Chumbawamba. We regret to inform you that your video has been blocked from playback due to a music rights issue.

Now, I'm all in favour of copyright and I understand why record companies have a hard time with Limewire, and I'd be really miffed if people copied out Greenideas and pasted it all over the internet ¹ but I find it hard to believe that Chumbawumba's inalienable rights and long-term financial security are being seriously violated by the TRFC U9s.

In fact the reverse: you would think that in the world of the long tail, and a sea of content flooding the internet, that sound-track might serve to keep their ditty alive and remembered a little longer.

So how does it work anyway? Have record companies built bots that download all the video on youtube, and listen to it, searching for their unique chord sequences?  That must be a rewarding job: "I'm in the Music Business" "Oh, yes, what do you do?"  "Umm - music silencing department"

And all that effort to prolong a business model that must, surely be dead. I think we'll look back at the music business as a distinctly 20th century coda, a wierd period where large companies were, astonishingly,  able to control the distribution of . . . music. Kind of like GM seeds.

Sigh - so there must be a service that allows me to disguise the soundtrack so that it is unrecognisable to robots and but sounds exactly the same to the mums and dads of the U9s?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
¹Transparent lie warning : of course I'd love it :-)

Socially Challenged

picture by massdistraction

There are some very splendid things about working in an Investment Bank and one of them is the personal training that we receive in the good years.

I've worked in the City a long time and there have been very many good years; and I have received a lot of personal training. Some of it I even remember.

So this morning there I was in the hustle and bustle of the breakfast-time canteen, only slightly knackered after my 8.5km pre-work run and entirely focussed on toasting my reward bagel (pumpkin seed, to be lightly done with butter and marmite), but the toaster was running too fast - or too cool - so that the conveyor belt was delivering a flow of hot-but-still-raw bread products, each retrieved with increasing impatience by their owners and returned for a second, or even third, passage through the deeply disappointing inferno.

And so I was tut-tutting with rest of them and huff-puffing with the best of them, and then for some reason I remembered my old coach and the well-meaning, if uncomfortable, challenges she used to set me: like smiling at strangers, just for the hell of it; and a little bit of nostalgia, or recklessness, or madness must have crept over me for suddenly, and quickly before I could change my mind, I turned to bloke behind me (two slices of unappetising, limp white sliced bread, third time through) and I smiled brightly and said: 'Huh, well it may be annoying for us, but anyone with a hitherto unfulfilled craving for very warm, but yet completely uncooked bakery goods must be having a great morning"

And he smiled back warmly and said "They sure must be" and then turned away from me to claim as it tumbled from the conveyor his steaming but still totally white bread and as he did so he muttered quietly, but perfectly distinctly under his breath, 'wierdo'

I should realised that he was the dangerous, humourless type, from the bread.

Crisis Management

picture by ton3vita

Well that was an exciting month to take a break from blogging: while greenideas was away banks collapsed in the worst financial crisis that even old timers like me can remember.

It's an astonishing 23 years this month since I started work in the City.

(I can still remember my first day: it was an appropriately high tension, sweaty one as I found myself hopelessly lost walking in small circles around Holborn viaduct looking for an office I had never been to before, without the aid of an A to Z or even, in fact, the address)

In the first twenty-two years, eleven months of my career I witnessed just three financial events of the where-you-when? variety. They were:

• 19 October 1987
• 16 September 1992
• and, of course, most excitingly of all: the glorious champagne soaked hedonism of the celebrations in the old Arbitrager, Throgmorton Street on 16 March, 1988

Each one of those I experienced closely but vicariously for I wasn't actually an Equities trader in '87, and nor was I an FX dealer in'92. Nor, if truth must painfully be told was I even a high-rate tax payer in '88. (I pretended I was though).

And, if there was pattern to my witness it was that on each of those events I didn't actually have a clue to the full extent of the crisis before me, and each time I mainly got on with my work, glancing occasionally at the screen, before going home to have my tea.

Actually it's a good job I wasn't a trader because I don't think I would have been a successful one: a key skill in the markets is realising, seeing, understanding the situation you are actually in, the crisis that is unfolding, the options and opportunities available; and then choosing one. Indeed perhaps that's the key to facing any crisis whether financial, military or indeed of the soul: it's not choosing the fork in the road that's hard: it's noticing that you were, in point of fact, at a fork.

So third time around, facing the collapse of the financial markets and quite possibly TEOTWAWKI, I was determined to do better and to pay more attention and so, instead of merely working, I have spent the last three weeks chuckling at the sardonic wit on alphaville, standing outside Lehman brothers watchnig laptops walking out the building in what amounted to a mass looting and, in the evenings, mainly panicking.

I was a believer in omens, or superstition I would have noted how the extraordinary events in the markets were once again accompanied by extraordinary weather: while Black Monday was preceded by a hurricane, the fall of Lehmans and Merrill took place with Canary Wharf bathed in unseasonal sunshine, and on the Friday evening, ten days ago, several thousand people gathered in Jubilee Place to drink and talk in the eerie, late autumn sunshine.

Twenty-three years previously, in October 1985, as it become later and later, and I became sweatier and sweatier, it eventually dawned on me that I was actually going to have to ask for help and, at my wit's end I went inside an open church door, and asked the vicar. For an unbeliever I seem to have spent a lot of my life in churches.

The priest was kind but clueless, but right outside I met a grimy street cleaner who had no trouble at all pointing out the Coopers & Lybrand building. I hurried away, and when I remembered to look back to thank him he had disappeared. I got to work at 8:59; perhaps he was an angel.

Protest Songs

petulance by Foxtongue

We were in the country (not far from the lip of the Cotswold escarpment etc, etc) and Mrs Botogol ordered a Chinese takeaway. "Ready in forty minutes", they said, so I had to set out immediately, taking a sandwich for the journey.

It came to exactly £90. Well there were 11 of us, and no one ever said that the countryside was cheap. Although it is low-tech:

"Sorry, no credit cards"

I was unaccountably furious. Red-mist, fist-slammingly cross. Why didn't they say on the phone?

I emptied all my pockets. Not enough.
"We do take cheques"
Cheques???? Cheques??? They might as well take ten-shilling postal orders. I haven't written a cheque since 2004.

I went back to the car and fetched the parking stash from the glove compartment and piled the tiny coins into a heap on the counter before the startled Chinese owner.

"There you are", through gritted teeth, "eighty-seven pounds and forty pence. It's. All. I. Have. You'll just have to take out £2.60's worth of food. HA!"


Protests don't make you popular, do they? I could almost hear my Mother's voice in my ear "Stop it Alibert, it's not big and it's not clever".

But protests are also irresistible.

I don’t remember much about my life before I was about seven; for instance I have no idea if I even wnet to nursery school, and from the two years at the primary school I attended from 1968 to 1970 just one event made a lasting impression on me, and that was a protest: a rainy day, an over-long playtime, and fifty or sixty of us mixed infants lined up in the yard desperate to be allowed back in.

It was Lester Deakin who took the blame for starting the singing: Why are we waiting? (And sung all the way through!) but it wasn't really fair: it had been all of us, but to my shame I didn't stand up for him and and that day, as well as the of futility of protest (we waited a long time in the rain that playtime) I also learned about the importance of isolating the the ringleaders, for it was poor hapless Lester who was sent to see the headmaster while we the rest of us filed sullenly past the incandescent Mrs Briers, back into our classrooms.


However the urge to protest has never left me, whether it is against the Chinese Government strutting self-importantly around my town or walking the entire route of the wrongly-compulsory Junior House Cross Country race in 1980 (no, it wasn't big and it wasn't clever) or sneaking unsuitable words into important, senior management Powerpoint presentations, or now harnessing the power of Google to tell the whole world to beware of the holiday apartment at 17 Dunhamish Street, Edinburgh for every single window has been painted shut and consequently it's stiflingly airless.


At the takeaway we were in a stand-off situation, but the owner was the one in possession of the silver topped cartons. She took out the Crispy Aromatic Duck (half) with Pancakes. "Hang on", I said, "that's worth more than £2.60". She opined that I wasn't really in a position to negotiate and I wondered if, on reflection, I could have handled the whole thing a little better; could I have been a bit bigger and bit cleverer?

For protests never work, do they?

========================================================
Although the window one did! This morning a carpenter arrived and unstuck the kitchen, the bathroom and two bedrooms. Addresses have been changed to protect the - actually - very responsive.

Uncertain Tales

Engleby by Sebastian Faulks

Privileged and bright, Mike Engleby has no problem winning a place at a top university in the 1970s where he considers himself the voice of sanity in a bizarre and surreal environment. As his first-person, self-serving story develops the incongruities and unlikely flashes of foresight hint to the reader that this is a narrative that can't be entirely trusted. Colourful, but not entirely convincing secondary characters come and go and the reader is left entertained but not entirely satisfied

8/10. Compelling, if uncomfortably close to home. What if all Cambridge experiences were like this?

Liars's Poker by Michael Lewis

Privileged and bright, when Michael Lewis leaves his top university in the 1970s he has no problem lucking into a dream job at Salomons, where he considers himself a voice of sanity in a bizarre and surreal environment. As his first-person, self-serving story develops the incongruities and unlikely flashes of foresight hint to the reader that this is a narrative that cannot entirely be trusted. Colourful, but not entirely convincing secondary characters come and go and the reader is left entertained but not entirely satisfied. Or not all of them

7/10. I liked it, if a bit uncomfortably close to home. What if all investment banks were like this?

The odd thing is: I picked up this book hard on the heels of Engleby, thinking it would make a change.

Poisoned Apples and Other diversions

This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson

Fictionalised story of two great thinkers (Charles Darwin, Robert Fitzroy) whose minds and ideas spiral around each other's through their parallel, intertwined and tortured lives.

Their ideas changed the world but the world didn't thank them for it; with genius came madness, sadness and suicide.

Funny, Distracting, Absorbing, Inspiring 9/10



A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin

Fictionalised story of two great thinkers (Alan Turing, Kurt Godel) whose minds and ideas spiral around each other's through their parallel, intertwined and tortured lives.

Their ideas changed the world but the world didn't thank them for it; with genius came madness, sadness and suicide.

Funny, Distracting, Absorbing, Inspiring and self-referential 8/10

The odd thing: I picked up this book hard on the heels of Thing of Darkness, thinking it would make a change.

The limits of human knowledge

Every once in while, commuting home, I encounter a strange singing duo on Kingston Loop. They have been going a long time now - it might be 15 years since I first saw them - and I'd put them in their 50s or 60s. They make money not from guilt or embarrassment in the way that the young hostel-seekers do, but from their humour: They earn their crust from comedy songs with strange lyrics and not-bad-harmonies, backed up by a thin-sounding guitar; they accept Luncheon Vouchers and Rupees and they collect their money in an omelette pan; they are probably at least half mad; I like them.

They only have two songs, the first is called "This Train" and is a duet:

"This train......."
(...calls at Vauxhall, Queenstown Road, Clapham Junction, Wandsworth Town...)
"This train...."
(...is composed of eight coaches and you'll find the guard situated in the middle carriage)
"This train.....".
(...has first class accommodation, for first class ticket-holder only)
"This train....."

They rarely get through the song without being drowned out by the on-board tannoy, which, of course, is the whole point.

I thought of those two, last Tuesday night, while I was listening to the three-quarters-crazy David Gamez opine on the Limits of Human Knowledge at the ICA

"Can you go a go a bit slower, please" was the first question from the floor, as an excitable Gamez rattled through slides of impenetrable powerpoint, gabbling in incomprehensible philosoperese

(....,nonotreallyiveonlygoteightminutestosumupabout300pagersofmynewbooksoI'mjust goingtothrowthisatyouandhopeyougethegistofit")

"Only five minutes, now"), piped up the chairman, helpfully

Just 2 minutes - but fully 17 slides - previously, Gamez had told us there was no such thing as objective time but now, in the face of a watch and an impatient chairman, he folded completely and - was it possible? - he speeded up

(...however, positive scepticism is self-reflexively challenged because it does not place the aspect of positive scepticism above others. This forces the positive sceptic to endorse aspects that directly challenge it, and positive scepticism is led by its own arguments into an unstable sustaining/ negating relationship with the labyrinth of theories around it)

You are quite right: I didn't note that down, I copied it off his website, but I swear that's what he said. He also said that there's no such thing as truth; there's no such thing as knowledge and he couldn't be at all certain that we were real people, rather than aliens.

That last thought was entirely mutual, and there's not a speaker in the land who wouldn't have given an arm and leg to follow a performance as poor as Gamez.

Apart, that is, from Mark Vernon, former priest turned "passionate agnostic" who was next up and who read, entirely devoid of passion, from his script about....well I forget. Or Stuart Sim who promised belligerent atheism, but never came close.

It was a relief when we got to artist (and not philosopher) Emma Kay, who makes art ("digital print, on paper", I ask you) which explores the depths of her own ignorance. The Bible from Memory, Shakespeare from Memory, History from Memory, The Complete Series Two of the Catherine Tate Show from Memory. (OK I made the last one up). Odd, yes, but also oddly compelling, and at least she made sense.

As did - to be fair - the coherent, logical, lyrical and plausible chairman Hilary Lawson, a man whose promise was seemingly cut short in the Lower 6th when he encountered Epimenides' Paradox in a vulnarable moment, and has never being able to shrug it off since.

"The trouble with saying that there is no such thing as objective truth", he lamented, plaintively, "is that the statement in itself sounds awfully like a claim to be an objective truth".

A logical black hole, with a whats-the-point horizon which even a long career in philosophy has not equipped him to overcome.

-0-

If there is a limit to human knowledge, it's certain Google haven't heard of it and by the miracle of the net, and the power of Google, the other hit of of the singing duo on the Kinsgton Loop is actually available for you to hear (hat-tip to the OCD-fascinating London Underground blog)

It's a protest song. A protest against not being allowed to have a wash and shave in toilets at Waterloo

"for if you can't have a shave in a toilet", they sing, "then where can you have a shave?"

Now that's question to which answer really is beyond the limits of human knowledge.

So, what do you do?

I've noticed that this handy (if lazy) drinks-party conversation-stoker is rapidly becoming useless.

And I don't just mean when women are concerned (where merely to pose the question is to burden oneself with unwelcome value judgements), but with anyone at all: because nowadays the answer is increasingly likely to be impossible to understand.

One of my cycling friends (who doesn't know I have a blog and about whom, therefore, I can write with impunity) is a brand consultant.
"Ah, you mean like designing a logo"
"No, I would get a design firm to do that"
"but you'd be involved"
"well yes, but..."
"like Cayce Pollard ? Cool"
"There's rarely a new logo involved actually. It's normally more to do with establishing the company's brand values in a paradigm that makes sense for the shareholders, the staff and the customer"
"Is that a new wicking base layer I can see through your ventilated armpit holes?"


I'm only joking, of course: I know perfectly well what he does: He helps small companies establish their brand values into er, well, stuff like that. But what does that actually involve when he sits down at his desk in the morning? Apart from booking lunch, obviously. And working on tax returns, what with him being self-employed.

Last year I went to a reunion at my old college. In that environment S,WDYD isn't so much risky as positively dangerous. I know that. However, unable to invent suitable conversational alternatives in the intimidating atmosphere of the SCR, I allowed myself several times to be violently snubbed around the back of the head.
"Oh, I help companies leverage multi-functional pan-regional diversity policies"
"I'm basically a freelance quant, well more of a modeller really"
"I work in innovation"
"I no longer work in paid employment, I care for my children; do you have some kind of problem with that, you arsehole'

OK, I made up the second one; but you can understand the enthusiasm with which I embraced my neighbour at dinner when he turned out to be a vet. And also his surprise.


At this stage I should fess up: I too have a indescribable job. Consequently, I dread being asked what I do by well-meaning conversationalists. What can one say?

• "You wouldn't understand what I do" sadly, is probably the truth, but clearly too patronising to use in circumstances other than having just previously been called an arsehole.
• "Nobody can understand what I do" is probably equally close (and I don't exclude people who work in the same firm) but does makes me sound misleadingly like Stephen Hawking.
• "I don't understand what I do" is at least good for a laugh (but unwise, I have found, with people who work in the same firm) .

So I usually just mumble and change the subject.
Under close questioning I get hot and bothered and open my armpit ventilation holes


But my point (and I am coming to one) is this: I have started to notice that many people do just the same as me. No, not the unzipping silly - the embarrassed evasion. In other words : it's a not a topic that people talk about so much anymore.

I think this is going to have quite a big impact: we're heading for a paradoxical world where it is easier and easier to connect with like-minded people you don't know, but harder and harder to connect with the people we meet in 'real' life. If you can't picture what someone does all day, you can't know them.

And if we can no longer be defined by our jobs (because no one understands them) then how?
By our blogs?

As Homer Simpson once said "Marge, If I wasn't a safety thingummy then I don't know who I'd be"