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An idea for a television show…

TV’s Chico goes into “celebrities” houses and uses their scales to weigh a selection of pans. Their frying pan, their saucepan and a surprising pan relevant to the celeb (eg. a wok for Ken Hom, a skillet for Michael Fish, etc). Back in the studio a set of “celebrities” judge who’s pans they are from the gamut of stars. Here’s the twist (as if this wasn’t enough) one of them is the “star” in question. They will be embarrassed not to identify their own pans. The studio segment will be presented by Stephen Fry (geddit?).

I’m not old enough to feel truly deprived by the lack of robots. Lots of people a bit older than I were promised flying cars and robots and I imagine they are quite annoyed by the lack of them.

Robots are one of those really hard things to program. Voice recognition is hard to program. Handwritting recognition is hard to program. Anyone who has used either will know how far we still have to go. And yet a robot is still supposed to not only listen to us which is hard, not only read what we write which is hard but actually understand what we mean. Surely this is close to impossible. It is wise to never bet against human ingenuity and of course we will have robots of a type in the future. But there are perhaps some reasons why we shouldn’t try.

For a start when the robot was imagined there were a great many tasks that were annoying to deal with. A robot could wash your clothes and do your dishes. Well we now have machines that do that for us. We are getting close to the situation where the only real robot worth having is a robot with deductive reasoning. A robot that can solve problems. One that can understand. But that brings it’s own problems.

Rich people have often wanted slaves and what are learning robots other than slaves? Of course keeping human slaves is worse than keeping robotic ones. However if what we want from a robot is for it to understand us totally then to an extent it must be like us. The moment the machine can learn, which is the only way it could truly understand us, is the same moment it is no longer fair to enslave it.

A dog doesn’t understand a human enough to know what it means. And yet we know we should allow a dog a life to live and love. Anything that can understand us is impossible to control. And we shouldn’t try.

So Hello.

It’s been a while hasn’t it.

Sorry about all of that – and everything.

I am, I believe, back though.

So yes. Work has been unbelievably busy of late. We have been so busy that we’ve had to go out and hire people to help.

And along the lines somewhere my work / life balance got quite a bit out of kilter. And I apologise to you my, hopefully, patient readers.

But yes. All things being equal, as the economists have it, I am back.

If you wanted an analogy of what’s going wrong you would only have to look at the spies losing important documents on trains. Would you be totally surprised to see this headline:

“Government move to stop lost documents on trains, by banning trains”

Okay perhaps not that radical. But what about making it illegal to take property found on a train? This would make the newspapers and the BBC unable to report the problem but wouldn’t actually solve the problem.

The government has become obsessed with solving symptoms rather than solving problems. 42 days detention deals with problems we shouldn’t be facing in the first place. It comes back to George W. Bush. He isn’t stupid. He’s inexperienced and so was Blair. Neither of them could see what they were doing was wrong. And Blair was the enabler.

After 9/11 they decided on a strategy of attacking before we were attacked. This is exactly the strategy of focusing on symptoms rather than solutions. Nobody in power seemed to ask the question, “why were we attacked?”.

Katherine, as you might know, is a very keen photographer. Much of my holidays are spent standing waiting for photos to be taken. Of course, if you asked Katherine I’m sure she’d say that most of her holidays are spent sitting in cafés waiting for me to finish a writing a paragraph. Of course neither is really true.

When I’m standing waiting for a photograph to be taken I often get the chance to watch people’s reaction. It’s interesting to see. People are constantly trying to crane their neck round to see what she could possibly be taking a photo of. This is especially true here in the UK. On holiday people expect others to be taking photos. Here at home people are clearly quite confused that you might want to take a photo of a rubber band.

© Katherine Hall

Katherine has decided to get serious about her photography. And so she has launched a website and a blog. Truth be told at the moment the website pretty much just is the blog.

When people finish looking at the rubber band, or whatever it is, they often look up at me pleading with their eyes for an explanation. I smile encouragingly, but they never approach. Perhaps now I can direct them to the website.

http://www.kathall.co.uk/blog

I’m doing a lot of early morning writing in my attempts to make some progress on my novel (13% completed of the arbitrary number I first thought of – thanks for asking). This has led to Katherine and I disagreeing on a matter of principal that only you dear Internet readers can answer. What is a lie in?

For me it could be that you wake up and lie in bed reading your book or it could be that you usually have to get up at five thirty and today you get to sleep until eight.

Katherine, on the other hand, thinks that you only have a lie in if you’re awake and lying in bed. Not if you sleep in.

So which is it? You decide.

Mrs Fallon was my first inspirational teacher. She was, as far as I could tell, completely nuts. She was my science teacher and she had bags of presence. She had, remember it was the nineties, a two foot beehive hairdo which was greying but was no less impressive. Her twin sons were the music producers behind the success of David Hasselhoff. In the small storeroom behind the science room she had a skeleton.

Usually you waited for the teacher in the classroom but not in the science lab. She was always in the same room, class after class. But she made us stand outside because she wanted to enjoy a cigar between classes. She would normally still be smoking it while we filed in. As the last child sat down she would flick it from the front of the class into the bin at the back. How high we were at the end of the class was a factor of how much paper and how many chemicals there were in the bin when the cigar arrived.

She used this flicking skill to great effect in classes. I anyone spoke out of turn she would throw the board duster at the back of the classroom. It caused an enormous noise. If you disobeyed her while she was writing at the board she would turn, let go of the piece of chalk and it would go whistling past your ear. It was so swift you never even had time to move out of the way. I remember a boy called David getting hit right on the top corner of his right ear. It was an exquisite punishment. It showed she was in charge and he was powerless to respond.

I was reminded of her at the weekend when I was out to dinner with some friends. One of them was talking about a friend of theirs who had transported a tarantula on a transatlantic flight in their beehive – something that Mrs Fallon could quite easily have done. She didn’t get caught despite her husband being caught wearing a reticulated python around his belly. The customs officials clearly thought, “what’s the likelihood that both of them are transporting dangerous animals?”. A real life snakes on a plane moment.

Mrs Fallon must be retired by now, a terrible shame. She was one of the first people to make me understand that being normal wasn’t the optimum. In fact most normal people envied those who could successfully go and do something else. Being unusual for those who do it keeps them sane. It’s not really a choice. You are already different. But sometimes you need somebody to show you that unusual is a genuine option. Mrs Fallon was certainly one of the people who showed me that.

Since I decided to become a writer I have been reading authors talking about their craft. The question beyond all others that they are asked is, “where do you get your ideas?”. It is as though there is some mystical trunk of ideas somewhere which authors use to come up with themes for stories. I am afraid that’s not true. It only serves to show how people are quite happy to mythologize their heroes. In the question is the assumption that the asker’s ideas are somehow less than those of an author’s. It suggests that an author is somehow a different breed.

I published a short story here last the weekend called Gary and Fern (If you haven’t read it you may want to before reading the rest of this). I thought I would talk a little bit about the process. About the way that I got the idea and the way that the story developed.

I really like puns. I have to say that one of the most crucial story development methods I use is imagining a pun. A vague joke to hang an idea from. It’s often not obvious by the end what the pun was. But it’s important to point me in the right direction. So this weekend I was sorting out some rubbish in the utility room.* There was an almost empty wine holder there. It had come from my mum over christmas she’d brought it in the back of her car. For whatever reason the can of antifreeze had been placed into the wine holder. When it had come into the house by mistake it was always meant to go back but it had been forgotten.

So I was moving it out of the way. In my mind as I was doing this I thought, “Anti-freeze” kind of goes like “Antacid”. Is there a joke there? No… But “Ant Acid” that’s formic acid. That’s a joke. Or at least a pun. So instead of making a joke, I wrote a story. Who could possibly make a comment about that? An ant. But it’s not funny unless he’s explaining it to another species. A human? No too weird. How about a spider. Do spiders and ants get on? No I think spiders eat ants. Does this one? No he’s different – he likes him? Why? Because he tells jokes. That’s how I’ll get the ant acid thing in.

With a short story there are two problems – largely. How do you get in and how do you get out. People need to feel that there is a good reason to stop telling the story even if, or especially if, the narrative doesn’t end at the end of your telling of the story. It’s difficult to leave on “they all lived happily ever after” – so far I’ve never done it. But if you aren’t going to end with that, what are you going to do?

For me in this story I was torn between, and wrote, two version of the ending. The one you read where Fern survived and one where as Fern dropped but missed all the strands and died. I pretty much randomly decided to save Fern. I have no idea why except that when I enjoyed writing for the characters as much as I did there is a chance that they will be back in another story. The other version would have been quite sad and as the sun was shining when I wrote it, I decided to go for the happy version.

An important thing to remember when you’re writing is what your reader brings to the story. I knew that some readers wouldn’t get the ant acid joke. I didn’t mind that. I telegraphed it as much as I could while staying in character. If I went for the joke too much it wouldn’t have sounded right to those who would have got it anyway.

Names are another problem. As you might have seen from the comments Fourstar couldn’t help but imagine a Fern and Gary from memories of celebrities. That’s slightly annoying because I didn’t think of it when I wrote it. I was going to have Gary and Vern but I decided to make a soundalike in Fern and forgot to check with my own memory to see if Fern was a real name of anyone. I wanted to make it recognisable but unusual enough to make you assume that something odd was happening. Clearly this didn’t work this time with this reader. I am here to tell you however that this always happens every time. You can’t imagine all of the interpretations. The largest barrier to writing is focusing on what people will think of it later. You want to instead focus on enjoying writing it and removing confusion. Try and make everything you write as clear as you can and it will help no end. You have to serve the reader in this way, but you can’t ever totally second guess them. Worrying too much about that will stop you starting in the first place.

* Yes we have a utility room now!!! Incredible.

Talking to taxi drivers can be difficult. Many avenues of conversation are closed to you immediately. You would be ill advised, for example, to ask “Do you come here often?”. And there is always the sneaking suspicion that they are closet members of the BNP. The BNP mayoral candidate has actually announced their traffic plan for London now, it is simply: “Fewer people”. They aren’t specifying exactly who will have to leave but I’m guessing we could figure it out. And there is a chance that your average taxi driver would agree with him.

The one thing that’s absolutely certain is that they hate Ken Livingstone. They absolutely detest him. They think that Ken wants to drive them out of business. There is an obvious question about this, what with Ken being the first mayor of London, will they end up hating all mayors of London?

But every so often you get a gem of a conversation going with a driver and it makes it all worth while. I’ve chatted to them on subjects ranging from the disappointment they are feeling in their failing marriages to the joy they feel at Saturday morning football coaching. I think a lot of their passengers focus on talking traffic, weather and politics rather than talking to them about them. Once you do though it can be rather interesting. I’m always fascinated by people who do weird jobs and taxi drivers are doubly weird because they have to face long stretches of solitude in other people’s company. I think it could easily drive one mad.

In recent years, they seem to have rather embraced the mobile phone as a solution. You often find taxi drivers talking to other taxi drivers as they’re going along. So in a way it has become more like going to the office. That coupled with this odd invention which is the TV in the back of the cab for the passengers signals the death of this great art form. Most people will love it for us British are nothing if not embarrassed by the social niceties of making polite conversation. But for those of us who enjoy playing, “see how many miles you can go without the driver saying, ‘I’m not racist but…’”, it’s the end of an era.

The other Saturday I ended up visiting the Troubadour in West Brompton for a friend’s combined birthday and engagement party. It’s a great fun venue, formerly visited by Dylan and Hendrix, it very much seems the kind of place you’d expect them to hang out. A good time was had by almost everyone.

Actually the only pall on the whole evening came when some oik managed to bump into me spilling my red wine over Katherine’s new silk skirt.

Despite several attempts to remonstrate with the man he seemed to be feigning deafness. Now I would have normally left the situation there. No need to resort to violence which seemed the only remaining action if he couldn’t hear us.

But no, our host, who is one of the most persuasive people I have ever met, persuaded him to buy Katherine a glass of white wine to throw on herself. I’m not sure the man understood what was being asked of him as he wanted to know which kind of white wine we’d prefer.

Catherine*, our host, is like a one woman pressure group. And very effective she was too. She mainly just repeatedly asked him if he’d ever read Mrs Beaton. When the guy returned a few minutes later with the wine it looked like he wanted to be the one to throw the wine himself as if to be sure that it wasn’t going to be drunk. But in the end he seemed satisfied to watch as it happened. He then shook his head and wondered off.

I can’t help but imagine what happened on Monday morning at the water cooler.

Him: Morning

Friend: So how was Saturday? Big night?

Him: Well I bought a girl a drink.

Friend: And?

Him: She poured it on herself.

Friend: Surely the tradition is to pour it on you.

Him: I know, this suit doesn’t get sticky by itself.

Friend: Don’t talk to me anymore.

* Confusing having a Katherine and a Catherine in a story isn’t it. But then that’s the problem of not being the author of your own life.