Fabulous Huawei

And so begins my campaign to attract Chinese followers. Although the fact that this blog is written in English might be a problem. You'd imagine though that Chinese intelligence agents have foreign language skills.

I have been watching a lot of ads for Huawei phones. Is it true they take the best photos? Perhaps that would get me some nice Camel Trail photos, MiceElf. Maybe Huawei could sponsor the blog; are you listening guys?

The West, America in particular, seems obsessed with China as Enemy Number One. We Brits know better; they don't call us Perfidious Albion for nothing. Actually they don't call us that at all; that was Elizabethan England. Wait, we are Elizabethan again. Maybe Perfidious Britannia. So we'll wag a finger at China for its (obviously legitimate) actions in Hong Kong but welcome Huawei into our 5G infrastructure. "Don't worry, Donald, we won't allow it", then we do. Very perfidious.

I like the Chinese people. Fine, upstanding chaps. Keeping the world safe. So they have a President For Life. He's doing a great job, so why not? @GoXi

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A milestone - and a Marvelous name

I've reached 50! Not my age, that was a long time ago. This is my 50th post on this blog.

When I started writing, I had no idea what to expect. With the support of some loyal readers, to whom I give thanks, I have continued my ramblings - I do enjoy a ramble.

I really am grateful for the support of family and friends. I try to tailor my content to their interests, as much as my own. Walking, films, TV, football; that's the diet you'll get here (sums up my lockdown lifestyle). Little or no politics, although I'm not averse to the occasional dig at the whole political class. I don't really aim to be opinionated or controversial, just hopefully interesting.

Writing has proved an enjoyable pursuit for me in difficult times. I'm a quite private person, so opening up my innermost thoughts (occasionally) has been a difficult judgement but the blog can sometimes be about me as well as the world at large.

I get enjoyment too from researching topics, often set off by an article I read in the Times or other online content. A reference to a book leads not only to reading that book but to a blog post too. That was the case with the Three Body Problem and Freakonomics.

I'm watching football on TV while writing this and am intrigued by one of the Aston Villa players - Marvelous Makamba. What a name! He's Zimbabwean, so is Marvelous a common African name? Or is it a nickname? I found Marvelous Marvin Hagler, an African American boxer; that was at first a nickname but he changed his name to become Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Very modest. Other than that, nothing. But all credit to Makamba's Mum  and Dad; good name. Although checking out his footballing skills, he may be struggling to live up to it. For balance, I should report that he is actually a Zimbabwean international.

Ten minutes to go and Villa are one goal down. Maybe Marvelous can score an equaliser?

No, he's been substituted. Anyway, Villa are a hopeless case I think. They are probably going down.

More rambling.

Das Boot

Das Boot is a TV series, originally aired on Sky Atlantic. At first sight it doesn't seem like something you'd want to watch - life on a German U-boat in WW2 sounds like dark, moody soap opera at best. I didn't actually watch it when it first came out, for that reason. But I have recently watched season 1 and it is much better than it promised.

There are two strands to the story. The crew of the U-boat provides one, French resistance activists the other. Connecting the two narratives is a a young Alsacian woman working as a clerk for the German occupying power in Vichy France. Her brother is on the submarine. The series is their tale.

A tale of love, death and betrayal. The more remarkable in that it is made by German TV and shows the occupation of France by Nazi Germany in all its rawness.

And that's just season 1. I'm about to see the second season and will report back in due course.

Sharp Objects

I've not really connected to Amy Adams in  the past - I suppose early in her career. I actually haven't seen her in many movies. The one I do remember was a tsunami disaster movie with Ewan MacGregor. I can't remember what it was called and can't be bothered to look it up. I wouldn't say it was bad but it wasn't gripping - as disaster movies are supposed to be.

However, the TV series Sharp Objects is absolutely outstanding and stars Amy Adams.

I have an aversion to TV series which get an unwarranted second season - not because they are too bad to warrant it but precisely because they are too good to warrant it; they have said what they have to say and to contrive a follow-up undermines the quality of the original. So I hope Sharp Objects doesn't get a second season, because this is The Best.

It's easy to list TV shows that went on too long. Even the classic West Wing - should have finished when Bartlet ended his second term; there was no point to the rest. Homeland - should have finished when Brody died; the Carrie/Brody relationship was good, afterwards Carrie just went crazy.

Conversely, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (like West Wing, written by Aaron Sorkin) was so good and there was plenty left in it. The characters were ripe for further development. Don't know why the studio cancelled it. Ratings, I guess.

So, Sharp Objects, based on a novel by Gillian Flynn. Adams is Camille, a journalist who is assigned to an investigation into why a young girl - and others previously - have disappeared. In her home town, to which she is not keen to return. Camille is a seriously flawed character but gets to grip with the mysterious circumstances. She decides to stay at her family home. Her mother (Patricia Clarkson won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress) is not exactly delighted to see her and - what she (the mother) sees as - her disruption of small town life as she relentlessly probes into current and recent tragedies.

  

Eliza Scanlen (recently Beth in Little Women) plays Camille's rollerblading younger half sister and Chris Messina a detective (Willis) is brought in from another force to help with the investigation. He and Camille are the outsiders and are duly resented by the townsfolk. The interactions between these four main characters make a great show.

To tell more would be to spoil, so suffice to say that the acting is universally superb, the plot is a dark depiction of small town middle America and the music is amazing.

The 8 episode series aired on HBO in 2018, after which HBO announced there would not be a sequel. Well done, HBO! It simply doesn't need more.

One final thing: do not switch off during the final credits of the final episode; you will miss an important coda.

Freakonomics

This is a book jointly written by a journalist and an economist. It has one central theme, which I describe as "don't confuse correlation with causation". In other words, if two measures X and Y both move in the same direction by the same amount, you cannot infer that either causes, or even influences, the other.

If you are a person who, like me, has spent his life absorbed by and interested in numbers, statistics and politics, this book has nothing to say to you. If not, however - maybe you are more interested in words than numbers - the book has lots of entertaining examples of how this matters. And because there are lots, it becomes quite repetitive and you may well get to the point where you say "OK I get it; move on".

Which is what I did, after reading half the book.

It is pretentiously sub-titled "A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything". Don't let that encourage you. Or put you off. This is not Douglas Adams (Life, the Universe and Everything). It's a publisher's tag line.

Newspaper sub-editors often ignore the correlation/causation issue. Misleading headlines abound, even though they may be negated by the detail in the article. Do they want to encourage lazy readers? We - you and I, valued readers - know that just because the number of covid-19 positive tests goes down one day, it doesn't necessarily mean that fewer people have become infected.

Donald Trump knows: "Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!"

Camel Trail 2

After a good number of non-walking, i.e. light drizzle and 13 degrees days, yesterday was dry and hot.Very hot. Too hot to go for a walk? Maybe, but I went anyway. To walk a bit more of the Camel Trail - see earlier post for details of a stretch near Bodmin.

The walk started at Wadebridge, going towards Padstow. Although not the full 5 miles. 10 miles in the heat is too much for me.

There is no car park near to the start point in Wadebridge, unless you are prepared to go into Lidl and purchase a 69p bottle of Petronas zero alcohol beer and leave it in the car in their car park for 2 hours. That strikes me as rude so I didn't do so, leaving myself with a 15 minute walk from the nearest car park to the trail start point. So I'm tired before even getting started.

The river is in sight for pretty much all of this stroll, although it was low tide. The Camel Estuary is a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and hosts a plethora of bird life. Waders on the salt marshes in winter and migrating birds such as the occasional Osprey in Spring and Autumn. The river's pièce de résistance, though, is the colony of Little Egrets. Partly because I had no binoculars with me, I sadly saw none of these beautiful birds yesterday. Those I have seen on previous occasions have been nearer to Padstow, I think, so perhaps they nest further down river. Maybe next time.

 The first exciting thing encountered was a cafe selling ice cream in scoops. Needing energy in the heat (as though I needed an excuse) I had a scoop of salted caramel and one of honeycomb. Mm, delicious.

The second, less exciting spot was a sewage works. More correctly the Water Treatment Works - an obfuscation of gentrification presumably meant to make it seem to smell less. It doesn't.

There are lots of people along the way, mostly cyclists. These vary from jovial, relaxed chaps (that's gender-non-specific, FYO) who give a cheerful "hi" to fierce, determined individuals presumably looking to set a PB and who don't even see, let alone acknowledge me. And why are they all going in the opposite direction to me? Not one cyclist has overtaken me, although that could easily be because they can't keep up with my pace. More likely, they have ridden to Padstow in the morning, had a pasty and an ice cream there and are now on their way home.

There was one jogger, who looked so hot and bothered that I wondered "why are you doing that?". She was gone before I could ask her. Just as well,  I guess.

In all honesty, my pace wasn't its usual brisk one, conserving energy in the heat. There is a fair amount of tree shade though, which helped. Other walkers panted an exhausted "hello" in response to my equally brief and weary greeting.

On the way back from my halfway point, I wrote this post. In my head. So it wasn't all a waste of time!

Red button 2

"What could possibly go wrong?" I asked in an earlier Red Button post about the option given by Sky for fans to use an app to choose spectator chants for the "fake soundtrack" for football matches without supporters.

I should also have directed that question at the offers made by many clubs of having fans' photographs made into cardboard cutouts for display on seats (because we are dumb enough to think there are real supporters in the ground).

This evening it is reported that Leeds United have removed a cardboard cutout of Usama Bin Laden from one of their seats.

All 44 clubs in the Premier League and Championship are now presumably checking their cardboard cutouts for photos of Stalin, Hitler and Genghis Khan. Which you think they might have done before.

I learned new football slang tonight

A "jigsaw" player is one who goes to pieces in the box. Never heard of it.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

...so said the dolphins when they departed Planet Earth just before it is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. After they have made a copy of Earth, and all its contents, somewhere else. Ctrl-X then Ctrl-V.

Dolphins are supposed to be clever, yes? Cleverer than us? It sure seems like it in this case. They clearly discovered Qwerty keyboards, interstellar travel and clipboards. And how to perform and monetise acrobatics to an adoring public. P. T. Barnum, eat your heart out.

Your local chippie run out of fish? A dolphin eats around 30 pounds of fish a day and there are some one million dolphins in the world, so blame them. If they can't get enough from our over-fished seas, they will shoot over to the chippie and grab all the cod and chips. In Earth's new home we should ban dolphins, methinks.

Obviously "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish" is also a Brexit meme. Enough.

I wish I could be a ...

...video streamer.

I get immense pleasure out of watching YouTube videos and sometimes catching live Twitch streams.

Regular readers will recall that I play the computer strategy game Civilization VI (O-oh, there go my readers - bye bye. No! Don't go; be patient, this leads to something). Without wishing to be boastful, or inversely falsely modest, I can say I am pretty good at it. I play on the highest difficulty level and beat the game more often than  not. I learned a lot by myself but also a great deal, particularly about optimal plays for higher difficulty levels, by starting to watch streamers playing the game. The best of them are also good at explaining their decision making processes.

I'm also good at explaining myself and so that's what I'd like to do - be a video streamer. I have the technical know-how (or can get it from YouTube and Twitch) to do it.

But I can't.

Why? Because I don't have the charisma that these people have. And because they are closer to the age range of their viewers so can talk the talk, using modern and youthful vernacular. The best of them show genuine interest in their followers in stream chat but more often than not balance that well with progressing their game play. They deal effectively with occasional idiots in Chat. I'm not sure I could do any of that.

Of course, I could take the non-streaming approach of creating edited videos for YouTube. But even those have comments from all and sundry. Would I care about whether those comments were supportive and constructive or downright rude? Do I have the mental strength to take it all in my stride? Well I write blog posts and encourage comments, so I suppose the answer might be Yes.

It isn't just computer games I use YouTube for - I have recently watched Mahler symphonies, modern jazz, Wynton Marsalis playing Haydn - and jazz - and a Bruckner symphony. Also fixing a problem with my Xbox connecting to WiFi. I guess if I wanted to learn about butterflies flapping their wings in the Amazon jungle (that's the real one, not where drones work packing boxes), YouTube would have a video clip for me. What a resource!

I guess it's not a bad idea to have new goals in your life, even at a ripe old age, but I'm not sure becoming a streamer is achievable. Is that sad? Move on, Nigel.

The Masai Talking Stick

I read that the Masai talking stick is used by that African tribe to determine who can speak in a tribal gathering. If you have the stick, you may speak. If not, not.

I believe other indigenous peoples use (or used) talking sticks. Those in the northwest of North America, for example.

This sounds like an incredible family tool. Imagine the chaos of family celebrations, everyone shouting at once, replaced by the calm, authoritative approach of the talking stick. The next time I am in Australia for Christmas, I will see if any Aboriginal tribes have them (apparently they do but call them message-sticks) and, if so, purchase one for Christmas lunch. How will my three rumbustious Australian grandsons respond? You get one guess.

In these video conferencing times, it seems like there should be a digital talking stick system. I starting watching the first of the latest series of Have I Got News For You at the beginning of lockdown, but turned it off after 10 minutes because the video conferencing was chaotic. I guess the comedy culture of constant interruption isn't well suited. For serious discussions, I guess the TV producer/director is the talking stick: "You have the stick, Boris". In the House Of Commons the Speaker is the talking stick.

I read on the Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. website that "A great many schools have adopted the Talking Stick principles in their classrooms as a way to teach children patience, self-discipline and to respect the speaker and his/her words. The added bonus is the children additionally are learning about First Nation culture in a tangible way." That's cool. Also on that site are references to alternatives to talking sticks such as an eagle feather, wampum belt, peace pipe or sacred shell.

Writing a blog is a great learning tool; now I know these things. This might be useful once pub quizzes restart.

To Infinity and Beyond

No, this story is not about Buzz Lightyear. But Buzz's catchphrase is actually a neat description of The Three Body Problem, an epic saga of Earth's contact with alien races written by the Chinese author Liu Cixin.

Oh no, not another Star Trek tale! I hear you say. I promise you that it is not. This is so-called hard science fiction, meaning that it is characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. No phasers, no "beam me up, Scotty".

This is actually a trilogy. The first book has The Three Body Problem as its title; the second is The Dark Forest and the third is Death's End. Spoilers ahead.

The tale starts in the era of Mao's Cultural Revolution, where scientists, as well as many others, suffered purges and arrests. Ye Wenjie, an astrophysics graduate from Tsinghua University, witnesses her father beaten to death. She turns out to be one of the few fixtures throughout the three books. At the end of the trilogy, many centuries have passed in Earth's history.

Ye Wenjie later, as an astropysicist, sends a message into space to see if there are any extraterrestrial civilisations. The message is received by the planet Trisolaris, the only remaining of the original twelve planets of the three star Alpha Centauri system, 4.37 light years away from earth. Scientifically, the three bodies - in this case the three stars of thew system - rotate around each other chaotically. This causes Trisolaris to go through many eras of alternating prosperity and disaster but now the planet is nearing its end as it is drawn inexorably towards collision with one of the suns. Trisolarians have been looking for a planet in another, more stable, system in order to spread their civilisation there. Hence the message from Earth is a potential blessing and, realising they are much more advanced technologically than Earth, they make plans to colonise it.

On Earth, scientists realise that the Trisolarians have built an invasion fleet which will arrive in just over four centuries' time. Thereafter, the trilogy deals with the ways in which Earth responds to this - technologically, culturally, sociologically and individually.

Each of the three books has a main protagonist and, as the saga develops over the centuries, it grows in scale from a planet-focused tale to a galactic epic.

The science includes known astrophysical concepts such as the three body problem itself, dark matter, dark forest theory, suspended animation and multidimensional space. As the story goes far into the future, new theoretical concepts are explored.

But this is not by any means a scientific treatise, or even a story of a battle between alien races but more about the development, innovation and ebb and flow of civilisations. I wish I was an experienced literary reviewer, so that I could give you a better description and impression of these amazing books. It's like asking someone to describe The Lord of the Rings in a few paragraphs. I hope this brief description, coupled with my enthusiasm for the books, will persuade some of you to give them a try. They are complex works; the first book particularly requires patience as the background to the tale evolves, but the pace grows, and the direction becomes clearer, as the centuries pass.

Why are Arsenal so toothless? A football fan's history

It's well known that I am an Ipswich Town fan. Even their recent ignominious slide down the leagues has not dimmed that. But I like to have a team to support whilst bingeing on TV football - which mainly means Premier League. Theoretically I could choose a Turkish League side but I have no affinity with any of them. So my support has gone to Arsenal for the last few years. In choosing a non-Ipswich side to support, I tend to go for glamour, so Chelsea were a choice for a while; they had glamour - and money to buy glamour.

Where's the glamour in Arsenal? I hear you say. Until quite recently, they had world class, glamour players - Bergkamp, Henry, Viera, to mention just a few - and a world class manager who, although not strictly glamorous, was a man whose views on life, as well as football, were worth listening to. Perhaps an intellectual, one might say, but with a fighter's instincts too - remember his head to head touchline spat with Jose Mourinho?

And I have an affinity with Arsenal, going back to the 1960s when my father used to take me to Highbury to watch players such as Frank McLintock, George Eastham and Joe Baker. In the days when you could turn up on the spur of the moment and get in. Train round the North London Line from Willesden Junction to Highbury & Islington, 20 minutes walk to the ground.

On 3 May 1971 I was at White Hart Lane (home of the hated Tottenham Hotspur) to see Arsenal win 1-0 and win the League title, for the first time in 18 years. Oh joy!

Skip forward to the late 1970s, where I taught at Ipswich School for three happy years, during which our first son was born. More important (just joking Simon) was the opportunity to get to Portman Road, home of the mighty Ipswich Town every other Saturday to watch their then First Division match.

Technically, as a member of the school's teaching staff, all of us were required to take games on Saturday  afternoons - a barbarous practice which I should have sussed out before applying for the job. Each autumn, the whole staff would gather just before the start of term to be addressed by the head of PE, who told us the latest changes to rugby's offside laws (even to this day rugby's laws continue to be changed with bewildering frequency). As a soccer enthusiast, I had no interest in rugby nor aptitude for teaching or refereeing it. I was therefore - sensibly - allocated a group of boys who also had no interest in the game. We - boys and master - shared a wish to get the whole thing over as quickly as possible and - heretically - to play soccer, whose rules we understood, rather than rugby. So we agreed to get our lunch eaten super quickly, make our way to the playing field - out of sight of the authorities, i.e. the PE staff - and get a soccer game done and dusted in time for us all to get down to Portman Road to see the Tractor Boys in all their glory.

And glory it was in those days. Bobby (later Sir Bobby) Robson was the manager and we were a force to be reckoned with in the First Division, regularly in the top six - 3rd in 1975 and 1977. In May 1978 - I was on my way to a new job in Manchester - we won the FA Cup! Go little guys.

I could write more about Ipswich (and, sadly, their subsequent decline) but this is supposed to be about Arsenal, not Ipswich.

So why are Arsenal so awful? They are thought of as a "top six" club, although now only by virtue of financial clout and a magnificent stadium. As I write this, Arsenal are 10th in the Premier League table and seemingly could slide even further. They have a squad of international players including German World Cup winners, yet they are a soft touch defensively and disjointed offensively. They have an midfield which goes AWOL. They do not have one player who would find his way into a (genuinely) top 6 side, so these players are badly underperforming. They have lots of talented young players coming through, but so do many of their competitors. 

They have no fight, no tactical  discipline and are - on the occasions such as yesterday when they take the lead with not many minutes to go - unable to hold on to a lead. They just can't keep clean sheets. Do the players not care? Are they not playing for their (new) manager? Do they not get coached to defend corners and free kicks?

Mostly, they lack pace, effort and desire. Build up is slow, ultra cautious. Taking the easy sideways pass rather than running at, and beating, a player. Where is the risk taking, the courage to make things happen? Are they scared of losing? Maybe a defeatist culture has taken hold. Time for a sports psychologist, maybe.

Those of you checking out this blog and this post, hoping for answers will be disappointed. I have no answers. In fact, I write this hoping that someone will come up with some. I am losing what is left of my hair by tearing it out weekly.

I'd rather talk about Ipswich.

There is one chink of light: Arsenal are only two points behind Tottenham, with 8 games to go!

Footballers run government

So Marcus Rashford, a young lad who plays centre forward for Manchester United - which is an English soccer team - has been co-opted into No. 10 Downing Street's Policy Implementation Unit. The Prime Minister, one Boris Johnson, is ultimately accountable to this unit so, when Rashford decides that school children who qualify for free meal vouchers should receive them during the summer holidays - i.e. when they are not at school- the PM immediately says "yes sir, Mr. Rashford, whatever you say, it shall be done".

A Mr. Troy Deeney, another member of the Unit, tells our visibly-cowed Prime Minister that he must utter the phrase "Black Lives Matter" in his next speech. So Boris dutifully mutters "stay alert; black lives matter".

A peripheral player in the Unit, a Mr. Mesut Özil, tells the PM that Turkish president Erdogan must be exempt from quarantine rules, as he is arriving shortly to lend support to Özil's struggling Arsenal team. "Ah"says Johnson "that's easy; you'll have to talk to Priti". "Er, please no!" quivers Özil. "Dinna wurry" growls a voice from the other side of the room. It's the Unit's security chief, Professor Lord Sir Alex Ferguson. "Let me talk to her....I'll give her a Glasgae kiss..."

"Um, I don't think that's a good idea....Dom, Dom help me out here"cowers Johnson.

But Dom has been cornered by Ferguson's sidekick (and erstwhile sworn enemy, but we must do the Right Thing for the country [although it's not his country]) Mr. Roy Keane: "Tell me about this little trip you took..." he threatens.

His Holiness Mr. Gary Lineker, never one to be left out when there are brownie points to be had, says to everyone that the 1986 World Cup quarter final must be replayed, because an Argentine hero "scored" a goal with his hand. "Shut up Gary" says Deeney. And Rashford. And Unit sporting ethics expert Diego Maradona. Not Keane (Irish). Not Ferguson (fiery Scot). Definitely not Özil (wimp).

"This is getting silly" tweets Johnson. "You're not meant to have any power; I am!" He stiffens his sinews: "Cry God for Boris, England and Saint George! No more Argies: Brexit is Brexit! They will not have our fish!"

"Let's do a free trade deal, guys. You get football back on the telly and I get to disband you".

And that's (really) how it happened.

All things Cornish

Cornish pasties are overrated and unhealthy, in my humble opinion. If you want a tiny portion of meat mixed with soggy potatoes and wrapped in thick tough pastry, OK you're not a foodie. If you want fast food, get a cheese sandwich. less of a grind eating it.Years ago when Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne slapped 20% VAT on hot takeaway food, the pasty lobby geared up to oppose it, egged on by Greggs the bakers. the Sun ("Who VAT all the pies?") and the Cornish Pasty Association (what? are you making that up, Nigel?). Prime Minister David Cameron falsely claimed he had eaten a pasty (surely not, how plebby) in Leeds railway station. The shop had closed two years previously. When will Prime Ministers learn? On a par with Tony Blair claiming to be a Newcastle United supporter.

But I digress. The hooha caused Osborne to drop the proposal. Cornwall 1, Government 0.

Now the story gets ridiculous. The Cornish Pasty Association runs the World Pasty Championships, held at the Eden Centre. A hundred competitors from countries all over the white, English speaking world compete to eat the most pasties over a seven day period. Bakers compete to have their pasty recognised as the best. I'm sorry to say I couldn't find a list of recent winners for you.

Q. Where in Cornwall is the International Pasty Festival held?

A. Real del Monte in Mexico.

[Seriously? with all that delicious food, they eat pasties? Are they crazy? Ed: actually Mexicans have a reputation for being crazy]

Enough about that dreadful food.

Now Cornish cream teas are a different kettle of fish (I looked up the origin of that phrase but it is really uninteresting, on a level with a pasty, so I won't bore you with it). Freshly baked scones, strawberry jam and clotted cream on top. Also unhealthy but deliciously so. One of those a week is something I have missed in lockdown.

The local cheese here is Cornish Yarg. Made from the milk of Friesian cows (aren't they Danish?). I'm not a great fan of cheese and my knowledge of the comparative virtues of different cheeses is as minimal as my knowledge of red wines. All I know is, if  you want a decent, tasty cheese, there are lots much better than Yarg. It's one of those indigestible, rubbery cheeses like Edam, and is covered in nettles. Yep, really.

However, it doesn't make traveleering.com's list of the six worst cheeses in the world. Now those are definitely to be avoided.

Hevva buns (or "Heavy cake"), which originated in Cornwall, can also be delicious. I used to get them from Tesco with crystallised sugar on top, before I decided to watch the carbs.

Finally to the Cornish language. which was revived in the early 20th century after dying out in the 18th. Why? English not good enough? Do Cornish people share secrets that they don't want the rest of us to hear? I have lived in Cornwall for 16 years and have never heard anyone speak any Cornish. Maybe they all switch to English when they see me coming and back to Cornish behind my back. I only know one Cornish word (which begs the question: how do I know I haven't heard anyone speak Cornish?): Kernow. Which means Cornwall. There is a Cornish nationalist party (of course, where would be without the firebrands?) called Mebyon Kernow. Apparently Daphne di Maurier was a member. They campaign for devolved government - a Cornish Assembly - on a par with Wales.

I love Cornwall and it's great living here. I know I'm not a local, and will never be, but I can enjoy cream teas, hevva buns and ales from the St Austell brewery.

The red button

Broadcasters obviously think we might need to hear the obscene chants of football crowds while we watch a match. Both Sky Sports and BT Sport are offering the option of using the red button during spectator-free live football.

As I write this post, I am watching a German league match for which the host broadcaster Sky Deutschland provides a "crowd noise" soundtrack. It's been created from real spectator sounds from the earlier (pre-lockdown) match between these two teams and is to an extent contextual - an engineer (German word for TV producer, Vorsprung durch Technik and all that) selects specific sounds for goals, penalties and so on. Whilst it may sound OK for those specific situations, for most of the match when nothing other than normal play (player kicks ball, passes to another player who kicks ball, etc.) happens it is extremely irritating. There is no red button option to watch without crowd noise.

There are pictures of people (presumably real people) on one side of the stadium, facing the main camera. Do these people get royalties? Apparently Borussia Dortmund fans can pay to have their picture on the "fan board" (some premier League clubs are now doing the same); no news though on audio clips of individual insults to be hurled at referees.

BT Sport say that they will offer "pre-recorded dynamic crowd noise". So real crowds from previous matches but not clear what "dynamic" means. Presumably the same as the  Bundesliga, an engineer (is this really what students study engineering at uni for?) selecting context-specific stuff. Sky will have "team specific crowd noise and chants". "Come on you Bluuues". Etc. Scarily, Sky has an app where "fans can vote for what chants they want played". Plenty of opportunity there for Russian and Chinese state hackers. What could possibly go wrong?

I gave up taking my sons to football matches when the obnoxious chanting and shouting of crowds became intelligible to 8yos. Today, going to football is not a pleasant experience for those of us with sensitive personalities (i.e. brains).

I often watch football with the sound off, although that is largely to avoid the inanities of commentators. I will definitely not be watching with piped crowd sound. Keep the people away for ever!

Vocabulary expansion

Apparently (that might just about be the most-used word in this blog) the adult human typically has a vocabulary of around 20,000 active words and 40,000 passive words. According to wordcounter.io. What a wonderful source of useless information the internet is. The former are words we use and the latter words we know but don't use. I'm amazed at that, I would have guessed at around 250 active words and 1,000 passive. Maybe I'm just dumb.

An example of a word that, for me, was passive, is Cappadocia, used in a comment on this blog yesterday by my dear friend MiceElf (get it? I didn't until it was explained to me; yep, I'm dumb). There is no doubt I knew this word; if I had to guess, I would stick a pin in a map of the world somewhere around Italy. In the middle, to get as close as possible. And I would have been hopelessly wrong; it's a region of Turkey. Check out the comments on my pigeon fancier post for useful info about Cappadocia. Now that I have used it, twice, it has become one of my active words. 20,001.

This friend also introduced me to a completely new word: eremetical. The Free Dictionary tells me it means "characterized by ascetic solitude". So now I know, and I've used it. 20,002. Although I'm pretty sure it will shift to the passive category very quickly. If I remember, I will use it when I next speak to my friend Tony; he enjoys uttering unfamiliar words and asking me "do you know what that means?" I never ever admit that I don't.

There is a regular column in the Times, I think by Ann Treneman, which occasionally concludes with "word of the week". I might even email her to see if she will include eremetical in her next column. Credit will definitely have to go to MiceElf though.

I'd probably be breaching copyright if I used some of her column, so go check it out if you are interested.

Word Counter also gives me the following useful info:

At age one, a child will recognise about 50 words

At age three, a child will recognise about 1,000 words

At age five, a child will recognise about 10,000 words (that's seems crazily many; do they count derivations, e.g. seem, seems, seemed, seeming as separate words?)

At that rate of progress, someone of my advanced age will recognise about 1,083,360 words, according to a spreadsheet which I built. So maybe not so dumb. Maybe explains why I am so verbose.

(Although I encourage readers to comment on these posts, please don't point out the obvious flaws in my reasoning - that is, unless you're dumb enough to believe it)

Any new words, in the form of comments to this post, will be very welcome. Begin!

Corbyn and May, pigeon fanciers

You heard it here! In 2018, the first parliamentary pigeon race (Lords v Commons, never expressed as Commons v Lords, of course) since 1928 took place. Theresa May sponsored (what does that actually mean in this context? Bought the pigeons their flying gear? Knitted them new coats?) 5 pigeons, the best of which came in 77th place (things still going well then, Theresa). Jeremy Corbyn's bird came 8th (more or less where his party came in the 2019 general election). Take that, wheat-runner!

Corbyn apparently once tabled a House of Commons motion calling for mankind to be wiped out by an asteroid [Ed: named Boris?] as punishment for using pigeons as flying bombs during the war (s****ing on the Germans?).

Despite promising not to, Nick Clegg's bird teamed up with May's birds and agreed a deal on charging spectators to watch, but couldn't keep up and got lost, never to be seen again.

(OK, that last sentence I made up, but the rest is true - I think)

Quiz question: do you know who said "The first thing I ever loved was a pigeon"? (Answer at the bottom of this post)

The website of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association (I know that sounds like something else I made up but truth can be, and in this case is, stranger than fiction) tells me that famous pigeon fanciers included Elvis Presley, Walt Disney, Claude Monet, Clint Eastwood, Pablo Picasso, Nicola Tesla and The Sultan of Jahore. Who knew?

Anyone know the world speed record for a racing pigeon? Nope, but Wikipedia tells me they can fly up to 125mph. Wow. A Chinese businessman broke the world record for a purchase of a pigeon at 310,000 Euros in 2013. Named Bolt (who else?) he was bred in Belgium (the bird, not the businessman). Apparently Belgian-bred pigeons are the fastest! So that's what those Belgians do all day.

The Telegraph of 30 May reported that "Pigeon racing will be the first spectator sport to return to Britain as lockdown is eased", on the basis that thousands of people on the route travelled by the 4,000 birds from Leicester to Barnsley will see them ("spectate"!) flying over their streets and houses. The race took place on 1 June; no news as to whether Corbyn's flyer has trained on.

Quiz answer: Mike Tyson

Lockdown serendipity

Music is therapeutic and the discovery of new (to me) music, and re-discovering old favourites, has been a boon during my self-isolation.

I was watching an episode of the Star Trek-lite TV show The Orville and heard the lead character playing a song whilst piloting a small spacecraft - a shuttle really. His dark matter cartographer co-pilot (who later turns out to be an undercover Krill soldier - don't ask) asked what is was and he explained it was Billy Joel. I think it was She's Always A Woman.

I really enjoyed the clip and I decided to investigate Billy Joel on Spotify. I don't recall ever having heard a Billy Joel song and it was a revelation to listen to Piano Man, such a refreshing, cheerful and foot-tapping number. It is now a staple of my listening, if I need to cheer myself up, or to stop myself worrying about viruses, the R number and how to keep safe whilst meeting a friend.

I often come across music I didn't know as a result of reading an article, hearing music in TV shows or seeing a Spotify recommendation (even in TV adverts!), and I eagerly add those I enjoy most to one of my playlists. One of my all-time favourites is the rendering of O Holy Night by Trombone Shorty (Troy Andrews playing amazing trumpet riffs) and his pals in a Christmas episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, as a post-Katrina tribute to New Orleans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etflv7R6NKA

This burst of musical exploration has reminded me that I have rather lapsed in listening to music. So a lot of my lockdown listening has been re-uniting myself with old favourites. They all have emotional effects which enable me to keep balanced.

The calming murmurings of the Adagietto from Mahler's 5th symphony, the sheer elation and majesty of the climax of the same composer's Resurrection symphony and Anne Hathaway's immensely moving I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables all offer me something which I need. John Lennon's anarchic ramblings in Imagine give me hope.

I am an emotional person and music can really affect me, often by its simplicity, but deeply powerful music such as Mahler symphonies or Wagner operas offer panoramic pictures of life itself which remind me of my own life and, even in these difficult times, how blessed I have been and how much I still have to look forward to.

I'm not spending £4.99 on wood pigeons

As readers of this blog (there's an assumption there that there exists more than one; or even more than zero) will know, I have been sharing my lockdown with a variety of attractive garden birds. Or not, because all the charming little robins, sparrows, tits and finches are consistently bullied away by a gross pair of wood pigeons, who proceed to gobble the seed which I have purchased at my (now open) local garden centre.

How do I know it's the same pigeons every time? Actually I don't but never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

I'm wondering whether there is a metaphor here for our lockdown itself; memories of all those crazies stockpiling toilet rolls as though, if the world were going to end, at least their backsides (and only theirs) would be clean. The pigeons gobble up the food then sit there - waiting - and eventually start grooming. Not grooming each other; that's what apes do and there are, at the moment, none of those on my bird table. If that generous Mr G is going to keep supplying delicious food, we are going to keep eating it. And if we are full (they actually look very full), we will sit here so that no little birds can share our goldmine; we'll just stockpile.

This is a tale of greed, arrogance and sociopathic behaviour. The little guys don't get a look in; we are most definitely not all in this together (ask Emily Maitlis).

It's not that I can't afford the £4.99 for the bag of seed. I have all that cash saved from not going to the coffee shop, café, pub and cinema. And a bundle of actual cash, unused for months. I have tried all kinds of seeds and nuts (no fat balls - that's disgusting; I can't feed the birds anything I wouldn't feed my grandkids); doesn't make any difference, the bullies scoff the lot.

So finally I am going to get one of those hanging thingies with net coverings. The tits will love it; the rest, especially the wood pigeons, can go starve!

Only 15 days to go...

...until the footie season re-starts. At least the Premier League (the Germans started  10 days ago but then they always get to the beach first).

There are 92 matches still to be played and all of them will be on some TV channel or other (thank you Sky, for my Sky Sports refund - which I didn't get - now you're going to allow the hoi polloi to see for free matches which I have paid for? Seriously?).

Two catch-up matches will be played at 6pm and 8pm on Wednesday 17 June. Thereafter the schedule will be:

Fridays: 20:00

Saturdays: 12:30, 15:00, 17:30 and 20:00

Sundays: 12:00, 14:00, 16:30 and 19:00

Mondays: 20:00

Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays: 18:00 and 20:00

So no footie-free days until 25 July! How cool is that? Get the beers in.

The Camel Trail

I walked the Camel Trail today.

Obviously not all 17 miles of it; I'm a novice walker.

It's a very peaceful, tranquil trail. Given the 4ft 8½in gauge of the old London and South West Railway, whose track it follows, it's easy to see that the width of the trail, at around 2 metres, is perfect for you-know-what.

There are tantalising glimpses of the River Camel through the trees:

Later on, after Wadebridge, the trail is a riverside walk all the way to Padstow.

There's a reminder of the railway days:

(in case you can't see it, that's a platform. Grogley Halt)

And a throwback to pre-war industrial infrastructure:

(I always liked pylons - didn't someone write a poem about them? Spender?)

I reached a point where a bridge allows me to cross the river. Oh, no it doesn't.

Surely there must be a café, Ah, here we are.

Nope, also closed. Guys, could you just open to sell a weary traveller an ice cream? Silence. Maybe Wednesday, when  they are allowed to re-open?

More thirst-inducing temptation:

I'll definitely be back there at some point.

There is a lot to be said for this walk. I was amazed how few people were there. Plenty of cyclists, even one very docile horse and rider. It's mostly gravel and, for me, the best thing about it is - it's flat! No hills, not even a tiny incline.

There are only two things missing from this walk:

1. A pub

2. Another pub (it was a baking hot day!)

I managed just under 2½ miles each way. That's a long walk for me. Next week I might go to Wadebridge to walk a different stretch of the trail.