Gobblers Extinction.

Whilst digging the mousepatch I listened to Joe Whiley reminiscing over her wonderful social life at Radio 1’s Bangor weekend. I came in for lunch and watched the Gilmore Girls. Neither was my choice. As a result I’m more convinced than ever the human race has a fatal flaw that will cause our downfall. Talking. It’s that strange thing we do that sounds like turkeys gobbling, and may in fact fulfil the same purpose. The Gilmore’s gobble incessantly inching along some flimsy strand of consciousness; in fact inching is an overstatement, it’s more like millimetering, with no hint of any negative emotional consequence. They live in the nicest of nice worlds as does Joe Whiley. Somewhere along the line it has been decided that one should have a wonderfully good time all of the time. I’m not a fan of Eastenders but at least the get hacked off and kill each other from time to time. No, talking will get us into trouble. For one it’s mostly just gobble but more importantly it’s the method by which we blot out reality. Why open a can of worms by saying you’re pissed off when it’s so much easier to say I’m fine. Why say “you make me sick always thinking you’re right, piss off” when ‘have a nice day’ comes so much easier. No, when the time comes, when a giant asteroid is hurtling towards the earth moments away from causing total devastation it’s likely Joe will be using her last moments of air time telling us how great ‘Florence and the Machine’ were when she met them backstage, and the Gilmore’s will be gobbling about beverages, and you and I will still be moaning about the smoking ban. Only one in a thousand of us will be alert enough to shout, “duck!” but it will all be too late.

Remote priorities.

The only time I won anything athletic was a sack race when I needed a pee. On that basis Paula Radcliffe must have quite a bladder problem. And don’t ever stand between Usain Bolt and a toilet; you’ll get mown down. OK not all track and field athletics is about bowel movements, it’s more about priorities. I like motors and wheels, and they like waving their arms and legs about. We all do what we want. We may regret it afterwards but that’s another matter. So anyway animals. After observing our farmyard cousins these last few weeks I’m beginning to realise they aren’t any less intelligent than us they just have different priorities. They want food, to play with their mates and time to contemplate. And more importantly they don’t want to be eaten whilst doing so. And sex. They are not interested in owning a BMW or a stopwatch, having a bank account, TV or armchair. This does not place them as intellectually inferior, with the exception of sheep obviously; it simply shows what they consider important is different to us. Similarly the fact they can’t talk is no indication of stupidity. In fact quite the reverse, it’s talking that’s often a better indication of stupidity. Our cats have an attention span far longer than the average fifteen year old and chimps have been shown to have problem solving capabilities greater than the cast of Hollyoaks who couldn’t even fix a flushing toilet. And lets face it, even Bear Grills couldn’t live as well with nothing in the jungle for years on end. So don’t think just because we’ve learned to use the remote we are a superior species, we’re not. We just have different priorities. 

Deeper into Shed Space.

As we travel deeper into shed space Earthly reality disappears behind us. The fixed knowns of our world can no longer be relied on. Substances that appear brick like are in fact rectangular impenetrable force fields that defeat even diamond tipped masonry drills. What seems like mortar reacts like table salt when touched. When I rendered what appeared to be a wall small alien beings emerged like slimy rubber peas. I later identified them as, what on Earth would be termed slugs. Wood, which on Earth is a substantial fibrous material here becomes crumbly when observed rather like Shrodinger’s cat. The ceiling of shed space remains white but emits flakes continually and so appears to be a self replenishing substance that, though it appears to be there, is, when one approaches it, merely a bouncy apparition. Also time in shed space is slowed down. The smallest job seems to take forever as one stumbles amongst this weirdness trying to find substances that react like those on Earth. Even outside, what appears to be a drain is not a drain. It is full of dark matter, the substance that apparently accounts for the majority of the mass of the universe, and sure enough when I explored further I found a black hole. Yes it’s all weird out here. Why for example does Professor Brian Cox know everything about space and yet appear only eighteen years old? No, science and DIY just don’t work like they do on Earth in shed space. 

Shed Reality.

Whether it’s the loss of Derek or a diversion from really wanting to keep pigeons I decided to clean out the shed. This quickly changes to shed refurbishment, and as a sideline a search for reality. It’s half of one of those brick back-to-back sheds of the 1920’s period with remnants of a chimney and anaglypta wallpaper behind a wall cupboard. It had obviously seen better days. Most of the paint was a loose fit on the plaster walls, which themselves were close but not connected to the brickwork. Hammer and chisel dispensed with the majority leaving unsightly belligerent lumps. The brickwork was part slimy, part whitewashed. What stupid bugger plasters over whitewash! The slime was water based, constantly irrigated from a leak somewhere. On inspection the back of the wooden gutter was mulch making the down pipe superfluous as all the water was obviously being diverted into the brickwork. Rip off gutter, replace rotten end of lintel and fit new gutter. Now the fun part. Power wash the inside walls to get to a surface that was firmly attached to, well anything, I wasn’t too fussy by this point. After a few minutes I’m covered in water and grit, and the floor is a pond. After brief thoughts of an indoor swimming pool and Jacuzzi I sweep out the water and repeat. I now have fairly solid surfaces to paint. It now becomes obvious that in the 1920’s there were no such things as power drills, Screwfix etc. hence they had no reason to make bricks soft enough to drill into. They also connected these diamond hard bricks with mortar hardly more substantial than beach sand. My solid surfaces were immune to attachment of the electrics I intended to fit, except that is for the lath and plaster ceiling, which as anyone with experience of lath and plaster will tell you, is itself somewhat of a bouncy enigma. So, although I’m down to the surfaces of reality they are proving surprisingly immutable. It just goes to show, even if one does the hard emotional work of getting to reality one tends to find it frustratingly difficult to change.

Hurrah!

Derek has gone. Flown away to spend more time with is family hopefully. We opened the shed this morning and he was there perkily perched on my bikes back tyre as we’ve grown accustomed. We exchanged pleasantries and off he went, over our heads, through the door and off, gaining altitude all the way. That may be him perched in a tree not far away. It was quite sad to see him go but truth be told, we hope he doesn’t come back for his own sake. It’s like that in England. One minute you’re the leader of the Labour Party fighting an election and the next you’re off with the wife and kids still trying to accomplish that natural smile. Maybe if he’d gone to Eaton instead of breaking rocks in a Presbyterian workhouse, who knows. So now it’s Camerclegg v Milliband, Milliband & Co. and a new politic. Sinicism is dead and we move towards the unlit nights of the 1940 coalition where a vote of no confidence requires a 90% majority. Mogabi eat your heart out. But it’s not all good news. Some have lost their seats and one, judging by what’s left on our front room carpet, has lost everything but its feet and intestine. Yes this time Domino has had a sparrow or some such and eaten most of it. These bloody cats! Our back garden is like the killing fields! And they’re the Vietcong. We’re going to have to fit them with bells; cow bells.

Pigeon Coalition Fights back.

Day 6: The pigeon is going up in the world. By forming a coalition to thwart the evil empire, i.e. Britney, Darth Vader and Karadan Molosovich, Derek, yes Derek, is now into his sixth day under our witness protection scheme. He began in the shed on the floor scuttling about behind piles of never to be used plastic plant pots, a small coffee table and a pressure washer. The cardboard box he was in originally had to be discarded because the bottom got soggy from poo and when Britney got in while I wasn’t looking and upset box and water container, and it’s probably safe to say, Derek. So he’s now been promoted to ‘free range’, a badge, which every supermarkets shopper will know, can be worn with pride. The first free range day he progressed from floor to the handle of a garden pressure sprayer to the rear carrier of an old bike. In fact as he perches stock still, every time I enter it reminds me of reading ‘Where’s Wally?’ to the kids. From there he moved to the fairing of my motorcycle. This was tantamount to biting, or rather crapping on, the hand that feeds him. After tense negotiations we reached a compromise. He stayed where he was, which was brave in the circumstances as he could be seen by the cats through the window, who took to pawing it maliciously. Today he’s perched on the back tyre of my pushbike, which is hanging high up on the wall to save space. So long as I talk pleasantly to him he seems quite unperturbed. As his food is untouched on the floor Mothermouse is now suggesting I build an aerial platform for him to feed from. No problem, just 6 foot of 3” by 3” from Wickes, a couple of anchor bolts to the floor and small piece of marine ply cut, no doubt, from an 8 by 4 sheet costing a thousand pounds. No, if I can spend my life grovelling around down here, so can he. No offence Derek.

The ill Billionairs.

Want to know why you’re about to get poorer? Go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p007dvhr

It’s about “The Big Short.” Nothing to do with football strip or the time you found yourself dazed on the other side of the room. ‘Shorting’ in the financial sector is an instrument for making money if an investment value goes down; a bet that a horse will lose basically. Now up to 2005 all the investment banks were having a great time making money from lending to homebuyers. The more they lent, the more house prices went up so the loans were always covered. Everyone was happy and all the horses were winning. But there comes a time as the race gets longer and longer when horses begin to stagger. Enter a neurologist with aspergers called Michael Burry. He quit his job and became an outsider on Wall Street spending his time, because of his syndrome, in isolation on the internet. He foresaw the horses that were laying the golden eggs would eventually stall. In the long race of the rest of time this couldn’t go on. So he invested in shorting the sub-prime mortgage bonds, which had over the previous couple of years been glammed up like an aging film star nearing death. Everyone on Wall Street hated him and his investors for trying to shatter the illusion they had all jointly created. By 2008 the horses were falling like flies and Mike was making billions. It was what’s been termed, ‘privatising the profits and socialising the losses.’ Think about it. That’s about robbing the poor to pay the rich, legally. By divorcing the financial markets from real world value they had created the slight of hand necessary to suck money into private hands. Mike et al’s bet was paying off by making millions of people poorer. House prices dropped, loans went bad and the rest is history. Meanwhile Mike, reviled by all, threw it all in as he and many of his investors became ill; wealthy but miserable. The banks had to be bailed out by ‘social money’, i.e. ours, all that is except Goldman Sachs who are now being prosecuted. It’s a fascinating interview well worth listening to. And where to put the blame? Well it seems rather than specific groups of individuals, everyone from borrowers to hedge fund managers played their part, but the main culprit was the human brain. It has a propensity for Psychotic Group Delusion that allows us all to in a sense go mad together. It took a guy who, due to his aspergers syndrome, was sufficiently un-socialised to recognise it. OK he made a lot of money but he did point out the Emperor was stark bollock  naked.