where art collides philosoperontap

This morning I had the first hangover in quite some time. It was the morning after the book launch party. A long shower, a couple of pills and a bit more kip has sorted it and I am now on the way to London for a meeting feeling remarkably ok considering. I don’t think it was excessive intake of alcohol that was the problem. I was on lager shandy for most of the night. Adrenaline fuelled nervous tension told my brain to keep off the hard stuff early on but I guess that’s why I had a hangover – I was tired.

I’m sat on the train opposite a really attractive girl. This is a problem because I want to look at her but I don’t want her to think I’m looking at her. I need to have some shades on:) It’s ok. I have iron will. Not really – am burying myself in the laptop to take my mind elsewhere.

We are now approaching Grantham. It’s something one has to do when travelling to London. I could take an alternative route but Grantham isn’t that bad. It hasn’t got much going for it but it is harmless enough. Its only real significance today is that they will be coming round taking food orders after we have stopped at Grantham and so it is what is standing between me and a bacon sandwich. It’s just after 11am so it is more of a brunch than breakfast but that is fine. The downside is that it is a British Rail Bacon sandwich and as such just about meets the minimum trading standards requirements to be called a bacon sandwich. Also the only thing that the tea has going for it is that it is wet. I’m an ungrateful miseryguts I know but life is short you know. Why settle for second best?

It’s all about attitude. It’s also all about very interesting limestone rock formations I have just noticed in a cutting south of Grantham. Not totally sure about the limestone bit but in the absence of knowing any other suitable rock type it’s all you’re getting. Interesting rock formations are good. Other good and interesting things are available but for the moment that is all you’re getting.

Sheep are also interesting, and woolly, most of the time. They also taste nice when barbecued, ideally butterfly roasted after marinating in Delia Smith’s apricot bbq marinade. At least I think it was Delia. Might not have been her but frankly I don’t really care. It’s nice marinade. Now as these words spill onto the electronic page it does occur to me that the word marinating looks wrong. It feels as if it should be marinading to stay in keeping with marinade. However marinading shows up as a spelling mistake using Microsoft Word so it obviously can’t be right. Marinate as opposed to marinade also doesn’t sound right. Of course the difference here is verb and noun but the architects of the English language were treading a dangerous path here. They walked right up to the mirror of incompetence, stared it in the face for a few short seconds and then took a step back. It was a close run thing but they just about got away with it.

Now I’m not saying it is easy creating a language. There are an awful lot of words to invent. It takes real experts to come up with discombobulate or transubstantiation, to pluck but two classics out of nowhere. You can replace those with your own favourites. Anyone could come up with easy words such as lorry or sand. Languages are clearly created by teams of people with different skill levels and experience. For example you wouldn’t throw a new starter into a project to come up with albatross or equine. These are not massively difficult words that require your best brains but they aren’t what I’d call the low hanging fruit. I’d say you’d have to have a good five years’ experience before being given that kind of word to handle. At least two anyway, unless you were on some kind of graduate fast track and had already been on industrial placement during your time at university.

I’d say you definitely needed to be graduate calibre to get the job though, whether you had had any previous experience or not. At least in this day and age. When laying down the foundations of a whole culture it takes talent. I doubt that Shakespeare went to university but he was the exception not the rule. Plus it wasn’t so much the done thing in his day. Not like today where people get degrees in bricklaying and advance trench digging. There’s more to digging a trench than you’d think you know.  A lot of physics involved, and geology, thinking back to the limestone cutting. It used to be that trench digging was pretty back breaking work. Not these days. Your newly graduated trench-digger is a pretty fussy individual. He or she insists on using their own hydraulic digger. It’s a bit like having a company car but different. In some parts of the world they even come air-conditioned. I imagine, though I have to fess up that I made that bit up. It’s just that it is an obvious progression.

Pick and shovel, digger, air-conditioned digger. Works for me. If I was going to be a trench laying engineer (for that should be the job title) I’d want my own digger and a radio and an internet connection. The digger should be able to steer itself using satnav so I could spend most of the time during boring jobs surfing tinterweb. The 3^rd Law would ensure the time flew by so I could be getting paid whilst whiling away the time on Twitter or Facebook or whatever the latest trendy platform is.

Not Facebook. The stream doesn’t move quickly enough for me on Facebook. Twitter is more like it. Quick fire 140 characters bang bang bang with no commas. You don’t see commas on twitter very often as it’s a waste of a character nowotimean? I thought about writing a whole book using abbreviations or tweets but I assume someone has already done it. Doesn’t mean I couldn’t do it better but for the moment I have too much on my plate. Got a few of ‘em spinning, work plates and play plates. Don‘t want any of dem plates crashing noisily to the floor making everyone look up and at me to see what all the noise is about, nosiree. Bob.

I added that Bob as an afterthought. I assume it comes with a capital B and isn’t meant to be the type of bob that a ball does when floating in water and is pushed downwards by someone’s hand to watch it bob up again. Usually done by kids whiling away their long summer holidays not being able to think of anything more interesting to do. Bobbing, in this scenario is more interesting than doing large jigsaws because bobbing can take place outside which during the summer months, even in the UK, can be a very pleasant place to be. I offer no other alternatives to long vacation boredom here. Think of your own! I’m not your dad. Even if I was I’d probably still tell you to go outside and play or give Fred a call and see if he wants a knockabout with a footy. I’m not ringing him for you. You’re old enough to do it yourself.

I don’t know about you but personally I am always glad when the football season is over. It’s a sure fire sign that winter is over and summer is on its way. Only problem is these days the season seems to finish later and later and then start again sooner than feels right. What’s the point of the football season starting before the cricket season is over? Mid September is about right. The ground is starting to get softer and the days cooler. You don’t want to be playing football when it’s too hot, I’m telling you.

At least the cricket season has started before the end of the football season. It is the true sign of the arrival of summer even though every year we always have a bit of a laugh because there they are in their whites out in the middle wearing several layers because it is so wet and cold.

You don’t find many Freds around these days. I think I only know one and he lives in Canada which is a big country with big swings in its seasons. Canadian winters are long and I’d probably be happy to wait until the summer to play football, not that I am particularly a football fan. In Canada it would be acceptable for the football and cricket seasons to totally coincide. That is my definitive position on the subject. Full stop. And emphatic full stop in fact.

Can’t get any more emphatic than that. Think dramatic pause where everyone stops doing whatever they are doing and wonder what’s going to happen next. I have to tell you I don’t know myself. Whatever comes out comes out. I have no control over it. Drivel, impressive deep thinking, the lot. Thinking about it the deep thinking bit seems fairly unlikely but you never know do you? Eh? You will have to keep reading just in case the next page contains the most impressive, amusing and original stuff you’ve ever read in your short, sweet life. Note I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here and assuming that you have actually had a good life, thus far at least. Don’t read anything into the “short” bit. Everyone’s life is short in the great geological timeline scheme of things.

The more we drill into it it may be seen that the 3^rd law gets everywhere, permeates every aspect of our lives. That’s the long and the short of it 🙂

3rd Law Part 23 here

3rd Law Part 25 ere