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I was talking to an American friend of mine a while ago about a strange phenomenon connected to the attacks on the Twin Towers. Despite our best efforts, the effect of globalisation have caused us in the uk to refer to those incidents as the attacks of September 11^th rather than the 11^th September as would be more appropriate in the English language. I was also mentioning that there was a rather nice symmetry in that the numbers 9/11 were the telephone number of the emergency services in America and that perhaps Britain would be protected simply by the fact that we don’t have a possibility of the date ever being 99/9. Obviously I can only say now – how wrong I was. She did make a point which I shall, for the time being, railroad neatly across. She made the point that it certainly wasn’t the first time that this kind of rampant globalisation had caused such an effect but that the last time, at least the last time she could think of, the effect had been the other way around.

In the week of the first attack on London the Olympics had been announced as having gone London’s way and that, it seemed was that. The London 2012 team had originally received a lot of resistance from Londoners to the Olympics. In fact in the original Olympic Commission report the apathy of Londoners was considered to be one of the main reasons to stay away. But our bluff exteriors had been worn away and a nice feeling of gentle acceptance had become the norm across London. The feeling of having won the Olympics here was a genuine one of joy – not something that often happens to a city of this size. Katherine and I walked up to the Freemasons on Wednesday evening and people were chatting away about where they had been when they’d found out that it had gone our way. People seemed to be genuinely excited, and on the back of the success of Live 8 and what with what seemed likely to be announced from G8, I found myself saying to Katherine as we settled down into a deep sofa with a couple of cold beers that we were clearly headed for a wonderful feel-good summer the likes of which the capital hadn’t seen for many a year.

If this sounds like dramatic licence then I can only assure you that it is not. London genuinely felt good about itself when it went to sleep on Wednesday night. Obviously this made it all the stranger when the next morning the events of the 7^th July occurred.

Luckily for me, Katherine and I were at home on the sofa when we found out. We were watching a movie and my father called to find out if we were on the tube. He had been at work for a while already so was fine and was just calling now to check on what was happening. At that point it was being billed only as a power surge but soon enough we found out everything of what had happened.

There is a big difference between knowing what is exactly going on with the people that you love and when you don’t. Within about ten minutes of finding out what had happened I had discovered that all of the people that I expected to be in London were okay and safe. And from then on in I was watching the event as an outsider. Despite the strangeness of this being the place where I have lived for most of my life. And most of the trouble being in places right near where I have worked for years it just didn’t seem as real to me as what happened in Manhattan. The main difference, I feel, is that I knew people actually directly affected by the Twin Towers attacks. Whereas, so far, I don’t know anyone who was any more affected by what happened on Thursday then to have an unusual commute home from work in the evening.

Part of this feeling towards what happened was to do with the small number of people killed or injured in comparison with what happened in New York and Madrid, especially when coupled with the almost relief that the inevitable had actually occurred and that we had coped well. Part of this was due to the feel good factor that was already running in the city. And part of this was due to one other factor which perhaps it was only me feeling it but I’m not so sure about it.

It seemed, and this is going to seem trite I’m sure, like the British TV adaptation of September 11^th. We couldn’t quite afford the special effects, the extras, the big action scenes and so on. And yet inside this insensitive belittling of people’s lives (not to mention the British television networks production values) there is some kernel of truth I think. We didn’t actually see any of the action, only the reaction. And as every good writer knows you don’t tell you show. I watched both events on TV unfold live, and one affected me more than the other. And the one in my home town should have affected me more I think (although the larger number of deaths and the fact I had lived in and knew people who continued to live in New York made a difference) the main reason is that we watched the disaster happen. Whereas with what happened in London we were being told of all of the things that had already happened.

Anyway I’ll leave that topic there for a moment.

The last thing I will say is about the previous globalisation event that was the precursor of us adopting the wrong way around date. It was of course the 4^th July. American’s still say it our way around because it is the only holiday that survives since British rule and they didn’t change the date around until afterwards. But it still survives as a reminder of just how much our two nations do have to do with each other.

I found a pair of shoes from America the other day. While looking a them I realised something was a little odd but I couldn’t figure it out. Several days later I twigged what the cause of my discomfort was.

In America they have a slogan which ou see from time to time side by side with their American flag. It says, “Don’t tread on me”. An odd sentiment for a flag one would feel considering much of it’s life is spent hanging on the end of poles up in the sky where there is little footwear present.*

But then that was the problem with the shoes. They had an American flag stitched right in there on the instep. How could you avoid treading on it?

* The story of the “Don’t tread on me” slogan is actually quite interesting. It actually doesn’t refer to the stars and strips flag at all but a different one altogether called the Gadsden flag. But sometimes the whole thing is combined. The Gadsden flag precedes the stars and stripes but then it’s subject, which is a rattlesnake, actually even precedes that.

The story begins in the French and Indian war. The colonies were wavering in their support for the battles. Some wanted to side with the French others with England. Benjamin Franklin realised that this was a very dangerous time for the United States. He drew a cartoon of a cut up snake with 13 pieces, which represented the 13 colonies,. It played on the superstition at the time that if you cut up a snake each piece of it would form a new snake. The slogan was “Unite or Die.”

The message was a powerful on and spread far and wide. By the time of the war of independence it’s significance re-emerged. In 1775 the colonies created their first joint forces these were the Marines. Because they were a joint forces they had not got a flag at this time. On the barrels of gunpowder the familiar symbol of the snake re-emerged. This time it was a rattlesnake and it had thirteen bands on its tail. The barrels were bright yellow to warn of their dangerous properties which is why the Gadsden flag is usually yellow. It also had the words on each barrel “Don’t tread on me”.

Later that year Benjamin Franklin wrote an anonymous letter to the Pennsylvania Journal. And explained why he thought the rattlesnake should be the national animal. He noted that the only part of the snake that changed was the number of rings grew as it become older. And he pointed out that the rattlesnake was a decent animal. It never attacked except when extremely provoked. And it always gave a warning of attack with it’s rattle which said “Don’t tread on me”. Franklin also believed that the Bald Headed Eagle was a bird of low moral character.**

**Yes this footnote is longer than the original article.

Who takes a hole punch to a restaurant? Well I do. Not all the time obviously, but certainly sometime. I have one with me now and I’m in a restaurant.

Certainly the sentiment, “who takes a hole punch to a restaurant” was one felt by the waitress who took my food order. When I pulled out the paper I was to file a look of genuine relief went across her face. What she had thought I was planning to do with it is beyond me.

You see I like to do my filing on the move. And my writing all out in the open. And so it creates some odd situations.

One day everyone might catch up with me but until that happens I will keep getting these looks every time I wield my hole punch in public.

How do the blind dream, I wonder? Obviously there are two kinds of answers to this question depending on if the individual ever had sight or not.

If not I imagine they have dreams where they sense things through touch, smell and all the rest. It seems obvious.

But maybe it’s not like that. You see I dream in a very unusual way. My dreams are like an audio book. I see nothing but hear myself describe it. It’s because of a problem that I have with memory.

I can never remember anyone’s name and I can never remember what anyone looks like when I can’t see them anymore. These are just some examples of the fault not the fault itself. Another is the way that I dream. And if it doesn’t seem like these things should be connected to each other then I should probably explain how they are.

In general there are three kinds of memory. Short term, long term and another type which has lots of different names but for now I’ll call unconscious memory.

Now imagine you’re having a conversation with someone. All of the conversation is being held in your short term memory but some of it is being transferred, if the information seems important enough to your long term memory. The information usually goes in in pairs. So you get soandso likes fish. You don’t copy the entire conversation just the important stuff.

But the thing is that you don’t copy “Michel likes fish” you copy “soandso likes fish”. And you also copy “soandso is called Michel”. And “soandso looks like…” well whatever they look like.

So far so simple. My brain seems to be very good at copying such things into my long term memory. I can remember all kinds of random stuff that I may have been exposed to only briefly.

So where’s the problem you may ask. Well it’s getting the info back out again. I have very slow visual comprehension, by very slow we are only talking microseconds longer than average but it’s enough. My brain is so concentrating on delivering me the information that I can’t usually deal with retrieving from memory something like a name at the same time as recognise who they are and all the other things that happen when I first meet somebody. However my memory will let me do things like pick up 11 hours later exactly where I was in the last sentence, without having to read the first half again, and finish it.

So how do I ever remember names you may ask. Well generally I don’t except a small circle of people. These people have entered into my memory via a different method, this mysterious “subconscious memory”. This memory is all the stuff that you just take for granted. The kind of memory where things stop having names but the name is the object. They become automatic.

Imagine a small bowl which has little grooves in the lip of it. When you first see it, that last sentence is how you would describe it. But once you see somebody use it, it becomes an ashtray. With objects and things this is quite an easy process and one which we did, in the main, in childhood. But it also happens with people. After a while people stop being “oh he was that guy who… what was his name?” and instead he becomes Paul. This process takes longer for me too but does enable me to remember some people at least. Also it’s handy for if anybody ever accuses you of objectifying them. Show them this and they’ll soon realise that it’s a good thing.

Interestingly this odd section of memory is also where prejudices are stored. If you don’t consciously think about it then it’s stored here. But most names are stored in long term. Just most people can access these bits of their long term memory better than I can.

The connection with dreams is simple. In visual dreams the part of the brain that deals with the images is working flat out, you see things very quickly and digest later (it is believed). My brain can’t really deal with this so just doesn’t bother (or it can’t express directly what it saw). Blind people, of course, may very well have underdeveloped visual areas of the brain – I don’t know.

So yes, how do blind people dream? I suppose I’ll have to ask somebody who is blind and see if they’ll tell me.

I’ve been a bit behind with my articles recently. This is mainly because I’ve been very busy. “What”, I hear you ask, “kind of excuse is that?”

And you’d be right.

I have recently been working for money. An interesting step for me. But much more importantly for gamboling.co.uk I’ve been desperately trying to finish a play. This has now occurred and while normally it’s been possible to update the site and write other things at the same time on this occasion things were a little bit different. Partly this was a because of the work business and partly it was because of a concrete deadline. I had to finish by a certain time and this, in an od itself, offered me some wonderful opportunities. I was able to spring clean my entire flat just while avoiding doing it. But the one thing I was unable to do as write articles for gambolling. Because I would have felt very guilty writing a gamboling article when I needed to be finishing the play. Somehow I didn’t feel as guilty scrubbing the toilet.

Anyway it is done now. It is called At Play and is available on request.

I recently included as a series of articles my diary from a few years ago (I wonder if you’ve remained stripy or if)

The diary was from a particularly odd time for me. A time of great happiness and great sadness.

I’m not sure if that’s not what it’s all about. The fact that we are more prone to notice other people when we are happy or sad means that times of strong emotion in both directions seem to go together.

We seem to love situations where there is an ending or a resolution but at the same time we tend to have situations where we actually get what we desire. Only through death do we get a final conclusion. The thing that seems missing from every story. The ending to which you can never do justice.

I have been asked since the appearance of my article the other day (LINK: If, as we may assume, weirdness is absolute), what kind of weirdness was I talking about. And in fact, by some, what I was talking about at all.

Well, let me explain. An exact situation where the law of diminishing weirdness applies is with people who have obsessive compulsive disorders. These people have completely fixed weird ideas about, say never stepping on a crack in the pavement, turning on and off light switches, washing their hands thousands of times a day. Or what have you.

To them the ideas seem normal. To others they seem weird. But here’s the twist. Because the people with these disorders believe that what they are doing is normal they think the weirdoes are the ones who don’t do these things.

And this, my friends, is the law of diminishing weirdness.