I want one!

“The craftiest storytellers can tell you a tale without you realising it’s being told. They are called advertisers [..] They can tell a story with a phrase, a picture, and sometimes with a single pencil line. Without them transnationals would become extinct because in order to sell, they have to tell stories. They have to tell them to survive”

From Mark Thomas’ “Belching Out The Devil“

The background to what follows is that it’s born out of a conversation about Draw Mohammed Day. My friend was pointing out that said day was tasteless, as it was offensive to millions of Muslims the world over, and that while it was one thing to object to the extremists who prompted to the day in the first place, the act remains offensive to millions of people who are not extremists.

So here’s the bit I don’t get: why, just because it is a tenet of someone’s faith that they should not (or should) do a thing, is it automatically reasonable that they are offended when people who do not share their faith do (or don’t do) said thing? No-one is asking them to behave the same way. No-one is asking them to approve of it, or to think it is morally right. They’re not even being asked to look. They are simply being asked to acknowledge the right of others to not think or act like them.

My friend used an argument above about not offending her conservative aunt with her behaviour – that when she’s around that aunt, she dresses and acts a bit differently. I’m sure we can all relate to that – I don’t swear in front of my grandmother, I don’t talk about certain subjects with my aunts and uncles. But is that because I believe my relatives’ moral codes are correct? Absolutely not – if I did, I would live by them. It’s because I want them to continue to think well of me. And they understand that while I modify my behaviour in front of them, when I am at home I might behave differently, and they accept that I make a compromise in front of them in exchange for them not condemning the fact that I behave in other ways when they’re not around. They acknowledge my right not to think or act like them.

I am a non-believer in Islam. In the eyes of a member of that faith, which is the bigger sin – not believing in Islam at all, even a little, in fact rejecting many of its forms as oppressive superstition, or drawing the prophet?

So I make a compromise: I don’t go around beating my bloody great atheist drum all the time, in exchange for them not condemning me as an infidel simply because I don’t share their faith. I am, however, allowed to beat on it now and again, in the same way that they are allowed to tell me how they think I should be living my life from time to time. That’s public discourse for you. And if one wishes to partake of public discourse, by, say, belonging to a faith whose members do things in the public arena, then one must accept that not everything one hears is going to be in accordance with one’s private views, and that it is simply not reasonable to take offence at some of the things said. One must admit that others transgressing against one’s personal moral codes can, in fact, be about their right to self-expression, and not about attacking others.

Anyone who is really, genuinely and actually being seriously offended by something like Draw Mohammed Day has presumably already sat in greater judgement on the non-faithful, and on that basis, I find it easy not to worry about whether or not they’re offended over little things. I imagine that the great mass of the reasonable faithful, the ones that one might suggest are being offended here, are actually not seriously offended. Because the reasonable faithful, in order to be considered that, must surely acknowledge the right of others not to share their faith? Otherwise, how are they the reasonable faithful, and why should we listen to them, when they will not to us?

I did not, in fact, draw Mohammed, the other week. Because I don’t need to. But ultimately, it is important to me that I be able to say “it is not a sin to do so, should I wish to” and to reject the judgement on me of anyone who would condemn me for doing or thinking so. I acknowledge that they are free to judge it a sin, but they are absolutely not free to call me a sinner. I do not presume to judge them, why on earth should they be free to judge me, just because they believe differently to me?

Can someone tell me, then, what is offensive about this position? Or why we automatically think it is reasonable for people to be able to say “I’m a Christian/Muslim/Jew/Pagan/Buddhist/33rd degree anti-mason and I find that offensive?”

(I will pre-empt one possible line of argument: there are certain commandments/guidelines/articles of faith that I think we can acknowledge as universal – murder, theft, and so on. The sorts of things we enshrine in law. It is reasonable (if a little ludicrous) to say “I’m a Christian and I find murder offensive” because it reflects a very basic principle that transcends the codes of any of faith in a way that “I’m a Christian, and I find your worship of that idol offensive” does not. If you really think there’s a solid counter-argument to be spun out of that line of thinking, be my guest and try, but I suspect I am unlikely to buy it.)

Someone phone Grant Morrison, and tell him he’s won?

As a staunch non-Tory, am I wailing and rending my garments?

Well, no. Odds are tomorrow will be pretty much like yesterday, and will remain so. I’m not wild about the £6bn in cuts, but whoever won would have had to do similar, so I’m not going to instantly decry them. I am very worried that they’ll hit the most vulnerable first, but will at least wait until there’s a final budget before I press the “eject toys” button on this pram here. It’s just possible that the Lib Dems will reign in some of the Tories most egregious “fuck the oiks” tendencies.

Not wild about the immigration policy, and the couples tax break is a big bag of wank, and I’m more than a bit concerned about some of the language as regards unemployment, but other than that, I’m more or less OK with it. I’ll put up with a fair amount for a shot at some constitutional reform, and for the civil liberties provisions they’re talking about in the “Great Repeal Bill”, which I’m pretty much 100% behind.

In doing so, I’m going to relate the following true story:

Two weeks ago Mr Babatunde Akingbade died at his home in Nigeria. His death was recorded as an accident – Mr Akingbade wasn’t a well-off man, but he was a reasonably skilled manual labourer, and rather than pay for an electrician to run a extra cable into his rooms, he decided he’d do the job himself. Sadly, Mr Akingbade’s skills weren’t up to the task, and he electrocuted himself in the process.

Mr Akingbade’s son, Kumolu Akingbade lives in London – he had a little trouble with immigration shortly after he first moved here – some misfiled paperwork, it turned out in the end, but it all got sorted out. He works as at a company that runs activity weeks for children with special needs – I’m sure you know the sort of thing – a small group of children, who don’t normally get the opportunity to do this sort of thing, are taken out of London, to somewhere in the countryside, to go pony trekking, hillwalking and similar. One took place last week, that Kumolu was supposed to be part of the supervision team for this trip, but of course, he now has to fly back to Nigeria at short notice, to sort out his father’s estate.

So Mrs Carol Gavercole, who works for the same organisation is drafted to go along. Mrs Gavercole is a manager for the organisation, and if she doesn’t help them out now, they’re going to have to cancel the trip, the arrangement of which has been weeks of work, and cost quite a lot of money.

Mrs Gavercole has a son, Philip, who has several different disabilities, thanks to a driver whose brakes failed, and who mounted the kerb by accident a few years ago.  Philip doesn’t need round-the-clock at-home care – he still goes to a mainstream school, although getting him there can be a trial on a bad morning – but he can’t be left alone in the house for long periods. But sod’s law – wouldn’t you just know it – his school’s half term is the same week as this trip. Now Mr Gavercole is also a teacher, a deputy head at a primary school, but he teaches in another borough, and their half term is the following week.

With a lot of fast talking, the Gavercoles manage to get Mr Gavercole a day off to look after Philip on the Monday. And they beg a favour off a family friend for the Thursday. But that still leaves three days. Happily, the Gavercoles have another son, Jason, who works freelance as a sub-editor for the local paper. So he tells them that he can’t come in to work on those days, and spends the time with his brother, instead.

Of course, that leaves Jason out about 180 quid, before tax. That’s over half Jason’s rent. And then it turns out that that local paper don’t need him for one week later that month. Suddenly, half his pay packet is gone, and he has to borrow money off his housemates in order to pay his bills this month.

If you’re thinking of voting Conservative at this election, you’re planning to vote to make life harder for every single person I’ve mentioned above.

We’re all on this lump of rock together. Every last one of us. Politically speaking, I’m an anarchist, in the accurate sense of the term – I want to believe that ultimately, we’re all capable of organising peacefully to help one another without leaders or people in charge. But we’ve got a long way – generations and generations – to go to get there, and in the mean time, I do not want a government that looks on the individual as more important than the collective, because it is simply indisputable that we’re all connected. And even if you can’t vote to help the Akingbades directly, you can vote to help the Gavercoles, and for a party that will take an internationalist approach to the rest of the world – that will recognise that in the 21st century, helping the Akingbades will help the Gavercoles, which will help you.

I have changed the names and some basic details of the story, to prevent identification, but it is a true story. This isn’t a made-up hypothetical – this really happened. Please bear that in mind, if you would like to explain what anyone involved in the situation should have done differently, in order to justify why you think it’s OK to make their lives harder.

Well, first of all, you might consider writing to your MP again. Here’s what I’m sending. You’d need to amend it a bit to reflect your specific circumstances, but it might be worth doing.

Dear Sadiq Khan,

I wrote to you a few weeks ago, regarding the Digital Economy Bill. I didn’t ask that you vote for or against it, because while I personally am against it, I recognise that the issues it covers are very complex, the answers are not simple, and that points of view other than mine need to be thoroughly considered. I wrote to you instead to ask that you do everything possible to stop this complex bill going through in the wash up, something that many of your colleagues in both houses of Parliament described as a deplorable abuse of process, and highly controversial at the least.

I have not yet received a response from you. I’m sure one will be forthcoming, as you’ve always been very good about writing back when I have written to you in the past, but I think you will agree that with the bill now passed, this is very much a case of too little, too late.

I wasn’t the only one writing to my MP on this matter. Over 10,000 people wrote to their MP expressing similar sentiments. And I know that you have had more letters than mine on their subject – I’m personally aware of at least 6 other people who wrote to you on the same topic, and I am certain that we were far from the only ones, even if you only got a statistically average number of letters. This wasn’t an outcry in favour of file-sharing, or other criminal activity, this was the people demanding that their elected representatives do the job they were elected to do, and take time to actually consider and debate one of the most controversial bills this parliament has seen.

I write to you to request, firstly, an account of any steps you took to prevent the bill being dealt with in the wash-up, and secondly an account of the business that kept you from the House on the night of Tuesday the 6th of April between 5pm and 9:30pm, when the bill got its second reading – surely if the bill had to be dealt with in the wash-up, it should at least have had a properly attended debate.

I’m aware that you are, of course, extremely busy, and cannot be expected to attend every debate in the House of Commons, but with the election coming up, I would like to be sure I understand what it is that you prioritise above the issues that matter to me and thousands of others – there’s every chance it was something more important, and I would like to give you the opportunity to convince me of that.

Perhaps you might even consider raising a question in the house, demanding that as many MPs as possible account for their whereabouts that night – while I’m sure you and your fellow MPs hear from people in similar numbers on a variety of issues, it is certainly usual to see such a groundswell of support, not for an agenda, but for the process of democracy, and I would very much like to know why so many MPs ignored the request not for them to come down on one side of a particular issue, but to simply take time to consider it fully.

Yours sincerely,

Alasdair Watson

If you do send a similar letter, and hear anything back, please do let me know. I think it’d be interesting to try and put together a list of what all the MPs who weren’t present were doing, so if you feel like circulating this idea, do please do so.

Edit: From the Grauniad’s April Fools Day joke here.

What about? Well, you may have heard me and others carping on about the Digital Economy Bill. I’m going to set aside how I feel about it (although I’ll come back to that another time) for a moment, and just accept that some sort of Bill with that name has some kind of useful purpose. OK. It’s going to happen. Except with a Bill this important (the bill is after all, setting the basis for a large chunk of how our economy will work over the coming decades) it has to be done correctly, and democratically. There has to be debate, and out elected representatives should have time to consider it.

They’re not going to get that.

The Bill is going to be dealt with in the wash-up. (The wash-up being that period prior to a general election where bills and amendments are rushed through the houses expressly without proper oversight and debate – in theory to allow the business of the old parliament to be concluded.) The link above mentions that what she’s talking about is based on hearsay, and is not to be taken as 100% correct until Hansard is published. So allow me to quote Hansard.

Lord Young of Norwood Green: I answered that. However, the noble Earl is clearly as unfamiliar with the procedure as, I confess, I am. Nevertheless, I am reliably informed that the usual channels will see the proposed new clause and that an amended clause will then be dealt with in the wash-up. I cannot give any more details. My noble friend the Deputy Chief Whip is nodding in the affirmative. I rest on the assurance that we intend to do this. It is a viable way forward.

They’re going to continue to amend and push through a massively contentious bill, during the wash-up. So I think I will continue to quote Hansard.

The Earl of Erroll: I am in a difficult position. I am delighted that the Minister realises the shortcomings of this clause; that it has replaced the previous Clause 17, which I did not like either; and that, therefore, something better will appear. On the other hand, the method by which it is appearing is by a complete and absolute abuse of parliamentary process. I am not quite sure why we bother to sit and debate any laws at all if the Front Benches in another place can get together and put whatever they like into a bit of legislation. That is for another time and another place. I have always found the whole area of wash-up very troublesome, particularly as a Cross-Bencher who does not get a look-in at all. I have seen some very funny things going through. When I see two Front Benches colluding, I usually think that we are in trouble.

This is troubling enough, except that the other day, a BPI strategy memo was leaked. I’m going to quote from it, too.

John Whittingdale – an inveterate “timing sceptic” (ie. he’s for the bill but doesn’t think it will get through in time) has said this week that he thinks that it could still be lost if enough MPs protest at not having the opportunity to scrutinise it.

Even the proponents of this Bill do not think it will pass if MPs actually have time to look at it. They are basing their strategy on being able to ram this bill through in a thoroughly undemocratic manner. And they are going to succeed, unless you write to your MP, and demand that they demand the time to fulfill their democratic obligations.

The blog post I wrote on feminism did it’s job – it made me think, made me revise some views, hopefully making me a better person, and inspired one of the most interesting comments discussions I’ve seen on my blog. I want to be writing one post of about that scale/length a fortnight this year, and ideally once a week. I need to come up with a list of topics for myself.

Progress on personal blogging-related project: very limited. It’s the sort of thing that requires me to have entire hours spare to sit and chip away at it, and I just haven’t had those this week – Testament has eaten them all.

Gym visits: none. Breaking this streak is priority one next week.
Number of links bookmarked on delicious: 6
Album of the week: John Barleycorn Reborn, on constant play on the bus.

This tends to make me very careful when I talk about equality-related topics, because I am very aware that through no fault of my own, I am more equal than others. I did not ask for it, and I try not to take advantage of it, but nor do I go out of my way to reject the favourable inequities it bestows on me, partly because I don’t know how to, but also because my life is very nice, thank you, and my donning sackcloth and ashes won’t actually help anyone. The solution is to make everyone’s life as nice as mine, not to make mine worse, y’know?

Jenni linked to a conversation between Katie West and Penny Red. I found it an fascinating discussion that really made me think.

Penny’s point, essentially boils down to the fact the women do not have the privilege to do with their bodies as they please, free of political context.

Unfortunately, you don’t get a choice. As a woman, your relationship to your body is always political.

This bugs me on a number of levels. Firstly: that’s a horrifying sentiment. I honestly don’t know if it’s true or not – I know I don’t *want* it to be, and I know that my intial response is that it can’t be, that everyone has the right to define their own relationship with themselves, but I fear that is just my privilege talking. Certainly everyone should have the right to define their own relationships with themselves. Secondly it’s a staggering inequality between men and women, and I am against those.

I feel very strongly that Katie, that everyone, has to have the right to say “no, my relationship with my subject is not political – I choose to do this for my own reasons, and I am declaring that my work, and the relationship with my subject that it is part of, is not about the wider issues surrounding said subject, it is simply about me and my thoughts”. Art may not exist in a vacuum, but an artist may certainly declare that their work is not, for them, part of a wider context, and ask not to be considered in that way. It doesn’t follow that everyone will respect that request, but they have the right to ask for it, and frankly, if a thing is asked for, and it costs nothing to grant it, then it is churlish not to do so.

I am however aware that Katie’s chosen subject is a very charged one. That it may not actually be possible, thanks to the state of gender equality.

And this is where I get back to me. Because really, everything’s about me, of course. I’m a middle class white etc etc.

A brief digression. I don’t like being called a feminist. I mean, I am one, I guess, but men using the term sets my teeth on edge. Not because of the women who use the label, but because of the men. Almost every bloke I’ve ever met who actually used the term “feminist” to describe themselves as a matter of course has had something of the slightly-too-earnest, trying-a-bit-too-hard about him. And, generally, a closer examination of their conduct has revealed that they haven’t been out for equal rights, they’ve been looking to save the poor defenceless women from the terrible patriarchal ogres, and they get very defensive if they’re ever accused of sexism, or being part of the problem. It’s all a bit sleazy, really.

I am not out to emancipate womankind. For one thing, I’m too busy. But much more importantly, all the women I know who give a shit about this sort of thing have about as much use for my help as they do for a chocolate teapot. They’re fully capable of asserting their own rights, and the most useful thing I can do is get out of the way, or possibly hold their coats.

Which brings me do my point: how do I get out of the way? How do I, as a non-fees-paying member of the patriarchy, help create a world where the quote above is not true?

I mean, I am not the kind of man that goes “phwooar” at women, or generally passes comment on their appearance beyond a minimum level of polite compliment. (I generally don’t even hit the “polite compliment” bar, being too dense to notice that someone has changed their hair/worn new shoes/waxed their moustache on any given day, but let’s cover all the bases, shall we?) If there are no women in a given group, and someone is coming out with genuine sexist horseshit, I generally call them on it, if I feel I know them well enough. (I don’t do the same when there are women around, as I don’t want to place them in the position of being looked to to validate or negate my perception of sexism if they’ve chosen not to say anything themselves.)

And yet, I am not able to opt out of casting a Male Gaze (at least, according to some second-wave feminists). And just to be clear, this isn’t a “oh, poor me, I am being held to account for sins I don’t commit, because I am a good little Grauniad reader” type feminist of the sort I identified above. The world is essentially ordered for my convenience, so I don’t get to complain about, really, anything on the equality front. Plus, honestly: yes, I fancy women, and I’m told that it probably isn’t healthy to deny that. What I am saying here is that I feel I have a duty not to make the world a more difficult place for anyone, and I genuinely don’t know if there’s a way I can avoid doing it, simply because I’m a man who, y’know, looks at things, and I am therefore contributing to the problem, and I wonder what more I can do?

Addendum: I have had a few conversations on this topic in the last week, since I wrote the first draft of this post, and had some useful advice, and have revised a few of my views slightly. I am publishing this post as originally written, as I think the questions I’m asking in it are sincere and hopefully valid ones, and I’m interested in hearing a wide range of thoughts on the topic.

So, in summary: I’ve had a good year. Started it by throwing what I think everyone agreed was quite a successful new year’s party. Fitted in trips to Toronto, Amsterdam and Belfast. Started dating a particularly marvellous human being toward the end of the summer. Ran a decent LARP through to its conclusion, ran some very successful (and some less successful) tabletop games. Took a decent number of photos I liked. Did a bit of writing here and there than I didn’t hate. Completely failed to learn a new programming language. Had a fairly profound religious experience by accident. Did a few stupid things, but on balance I think fewer than in previous years, which is all one can really ask for. And, of course, I continue to be blessed with marvellous friends and family.

Those of you I haven’t seen enough of through the year, I apologise, and tender my regrets – there isn’t one among you who I wouldn’t like to have seen more of. Those of you who have seen too much of me, the same. The to-do list for the rest of 2009 reads “tidy up, throw party”.

As for 2010, I simply hope it’ll be better than 2009 for all of us.

Yeah. You don’t actually need all the detail, do you?

I’ve had a bloody lovely day. Bucks Fizz and a croissant, the company of my family, a phone call with my grandmother, a turkey dinner, a walk at dusk and a bit of TV – The Gruffalo and then Dr Who. The former was excellent, the latter was saved by John Simm quite literally chewing the scenery and Bernard Cribbins being exactly as good as I’d hoped. Really very frustatingingly part one of two, and the big reveal at the end had virtually no shock value at all.

Notable gifts: a stock pot, and a copy of Larousse Gastonomique. Next year: soup!

I am fighting the tempatation here to gush about Miranda and my family, because it’s them that put my festive spirit back, but the rest of you don’t need my vomiting up joy and rainbows everywhere.

So instead, one last set of holiday wishes for you all. Hope yours was a good as mine.

I’m not religious in any sense that Christmas or any other midwinter festival could possible have any meaning for me. But I do love this time of year. I like that it’s been around in one form or another for thousands of years, like a groove etched in our collective psyche that says “it’s dark and bloody miserable out there. Take a bit of time to remember be good to one another, why don’t you?”

I feel like the days between Christmas and New Year are a time when we hit the collective pause button, and spend a bit of time with our nearest and dearest without any particular obligation to do anything but vegetate collectively. Work can sod off, plans that aren’t “let’s stay in and eat and drink, and maybe watch a bit of telly” can be paused. Everything else is window dressing – the family gatherings, the gift exchanges, the lights and the tinsel they’re all lovely, but really they’re just how we dress up a collective rest period to make it a bit more special. Remind me at some point to talk about the Lancastrian tradition of Wakes weeks in Summer, and why we really ought to make them apply to office work all around the country,

Honestly, by the point in the year, I’m ready for a few days of dead time, and battery re-charging. I’ve been having to fight to sustain a good mood a bit for the last month – November and December always kick the shit out of me a bit at work, and things have otherwise been a bit busy and stressful. One of my resolutions for next year is to have a more relaxed November and December, with less social run-around, because I don’t think I’ve had a week with less than three social engagements since October, and while I love you all, I don’t feel I’ve had much “me” time, and more time off work, because I’ve worked up to the last minute the last two years, and when your major clients are large pub chains, that means there’s a lot to do, and it’s put a crimp in my festive spirit.

So come back later today, to hear all about how I got it back.

Compliments of the season to all of you. May your holidays be filled with cheer.

Immaterials: the ghost in the field from timo on Vimeo.

Debenhams was the first website I ever did any professional work for. This is Local London was the first website I was responsible for the upkeep of. ipoints was the first website I ever really enjoyed working on. I’ve spent the last few years working on a bunch of websites for various large pub companies, and that’s been fun.

But I can’t really do a rundown of sites I’ve been involved with with putting Ninth Art squarely at the top of the list. It ate 5 years of Andrew’s life, and a lot of Antony’s and my free time on a less sustained basis. It remains the single website I’m proudest to have been involved with, even if most of what I wrote for it make me cringe now, but y’know, some of it’s coming up on a decade old, so y’know. I still don’t know how much of an impact 9A had on anything, really, but what I do know is that a number of people I like and respect were kind enough to say good things about the site, and every now and again, I do randomly meet people who remember the site, and say kind things about it, and even if the site did nothing else, I do very much miss sitting down with Andrew and Antony over drinks and talking rubbish about comics, and it gave us an excuse to do that.

I’m quite profoundly fucked off about the error at the DNS company that lead to us losing our two original domain names for that site, and having to buy the .org instead, and do periodically check to see if their of them have become available again. I also keep promising myself that I’ll rebuild publishing engine for the site, just because I’d like little things like nicer URLs on the articles, even if it is only an archive these days.

I’m kind of vaguely looking for a project on a similar scale to get involved with again, just because, well, 9A has been inert for a few years, and I don’t like that the single website I’m proudest to have been involved with is that old. There’s a few other websites I’m working on that I really like, but they’re small, private community things, rather than anything public, and I do quite fancy doing something digital and public that isn’t just blogging again – I don’t think I’d write for anyone again, but the idea of building a bespoke content management system for a website I genuinely cared about, that’s got some appeal, and I know I’d do it better this time around. One to think about a bit more in the new year, I guess.

Ingredients:
500g Tagliatelle Pasta
700g jar of passatta
250g pomodorino tomatoes
125g chestnut mushrooms
450g chorizo.
1 large onion.
3 cloves garlic.
1 red bell pepper
2 romano peppers
1 (or more, depending on taste) small red chilli
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon mixed dried herbs.

Chop the onion – not too finely, but you’re not looking for massive chunks, either. Chuck in a pan (I use a heavy iron frying pan with high sides) on a low heat with a generous slug of olive oil (there’s a lot of veg going to fry in this, so I tend not to bother measuring it, and just trust that the veg will take a fair bit). While that’s sweating and softening, finely dice the bell pepper, and then throw that in as well. Take a moment to enjoy the smell of slowly frying onion, then finely chop the romano peppers as well, and add them. Give everything a good stir.

Chop the chorizo into small cubes. This can be a bit of a pain in the arse – I tend to slice it into 1-2cm rings, then quarter them. Don’t add it yet – you’re just doing it now because the peppers can take bloody ages to soften. Stir the peppers and onions every so often while you’re doing this, and remember to stop and enjoy the smell.

Chop and add the small chilli(s) – I use one for people who don’t like spicy food, two if I’m just cooking for myself, and three when I’m cooking for total spice monsters, but personally I don’t enjoy the three chilli version. I don’t de-seed them, or scrap out the pith, because I want the capascin bite along with the flavour, but I guess that depends on how you like your chilli.

Halve and add the tomatoes. A tip I picked up from watching Heston Blumenthal – when chopping the tomatoes don’t slice them top to bottom, slice them horizontally through middle – it results in a more intense taste. Apparently this is because quite a lot of of the flavour of tomatoes comes from the interaction od some chemicals in their skin with chemicals in the liquid pulp, and slicing them horizontally drags more of the skin chemicals through the pulp.

Chop and add the mushrooms and throw them in. Then finely chop the garlic and add that, along with the diced chorizo. And yes, stir everything again. Leave it all going on the low heat, stirring every so often until the mushrooms look cooked, and the chorizo has released a decent amount of oil – it’ll start colouring the mushrooms, which I personally find very pleasing, for no reason I can adequately explain. At that point, you want to add the passata, and leave it all to simmer gently. After about ten minutes, add the paprika and dried herbs, and stir them in.

At the point you add the passata, put a (very) large pan of water on to boil for the pasta. Don’t cover the pan – the time it takes uncovered water to boil is useful to give all the flavours in the sauce time to infuse, and you’re keeping the sauce on a low-medium heat, anyway, so as long as your stir it ever so often, it’s not likely to burn – I don’t recall ever burning this, and I’m fully capable of burning water.

Once the pasta water is boiling, add the pasta – cook it like you usually would – some people salt the water, some people add a bit of olive oil – whichever your prefer. The timings for this kind of assume you’re using a fresh pasta that should cook in about 5 minutes, but I don’t imagine anything that takes less than 10-15 minutes is going to change things very much.

Obviously, taste the sauce as you go, to check you’re getting a flavour you like. Things I often wind up doing: adding a bit of salt, or a generous quantity of ground black pepper, or a bit of chilli/tabasco sauce for bite. This isn’t meant to be a fully-on spicy sauce exactly, but still, people should know there’s chilli in it, you know?

Serve with freshly grated parmesan. Goes well with a light-medium bodied red wine, or a peroni-type lager.

Substitutions you can make easily: Swap some or all of the chorizo for chunks of chicken, or for extra mushrooms – you may find your want to add more chilli with less chorizo. There’s a Lloyd Grossman brand pasta sauce base that’s made with peppers rather than tomatoes which makes a really great substitution for the passata, it’s just a bit hard to find sometimes, which is why I most often cook this with passata. And obviously, you can throw out the shop bought passata and make you own tomato sauce base if you’re so inclined, but I’m not.

I love food, this much is no secret. I like to eat in posh restaurants (and less posh restaurants – good food is good food, and it doesn’t have to be fancy), and I can talk about tastes and flavours in a pretty convincing manner.

But in the last year or so I’ve started to take more pleasure in cooking than I ever have before – it used to be something I didn’t do, then it became something I did because I liked the end product, even if I didn’t enjoy the actual process, but of late I find myself taking pleasure in the cooking itself.

I’m not a very skilled cook, especially not compared to the huge list of Serious Cooks among my group of friends, and doubt I ever will be, but as long as a recipe doesn’t require much of an attention span or any particularly difficult culinary tricks, I seem to do OK. I did black pudding with caramelised apple, and a cider reduction a few weeks ago, and some basic marinaded pork with peaches turned out so well I made it again the following night. Given that a year ago, I basically cooked the same three pasta dishes a lot (and I still do, because they are bloody tasty) I count this as progress. I made a sage and rosemary butter for the first time last night to go with some pre-purchased venison tortellini, and while it hardly counts as cooking, as it basically required me to melt some butter and throw some herbs in it, then add lemon juice once it was off the heat, it was still something I’d never done before, and will be doing again.

I guess the big difference from before would be that a year or two ago, I cooked what I cooked, and that was it, but now, I’m much more willing to give something new a go, and even once I have, I find myself thinking of other dishes I could so something similar with, or wondering “what would happen if I replaced the sage with…” Not everything works, but before when it didn’t work, I’d have given it up as a sign that I couldn’t cook, but now I tend to make a note of what not to do, and think of another approach – I tried to do a pancake filling made of plums and bananas that didn’t end well (came out bloody tasty, but it was essentially a mess of disintegrated plums combined with sugar, butter and rum with some sliced bananas floating in it – it was tasty, but it wasn’t what I wanted) and I’ve got a pasta sauce involving mushroom and black pudding that I haven’t got right yet – I’m trying to get little cubes of black pudding to crisp up to provide texture as well as flavour, but they either come out soft, or they totally disintegrate into the sauce. But I know what I’m going to try next time…

So having skipped past the need for that re-cap, I thought I’d now witter on a bit about what sort of design I like, and I thought I’d start with a couple of links to designers I know.

Phil Clandillon. I worked with Phil in a little yellow room in Acton. Dark Days. Phil’s particular knack is coming up with really interesting and clever shit using unexpected technologies. The Kasabian “Football Hero” video was him, as was the AC/DC music video that was an Excel spreadsheet, as were a few other clever things that you can find out about at his portfolio there. What I like about Phil’s best work is the strength of his ideas – the execution’s important, too, but I like the fact that Phil isn’t just turning out websites any more, but is in a place where he can come up with genuinely orginal stuff that pulls in all sorts of digital media, and generally makes me think “I wish I’d thought of that”.

BERG. BERG is the sort of place that I would love to work for, but quite frankly, am not clever enough to do so. What I love about their work is twofold: one, is that it tends to be cutting edge, at least in terms of thinking, if not technology, and two, that it tends to be made the with the aim of enabling people to do things – they’re makers, rather than marketers. Also, how can you not love an agency who named themselves after of something out of Quatermass?

Between those two, I find I’ve very neatly encapsulated what I love about design – it’s the means by which people’s ideas shape the world, and bit by bit, change our lives. Here at the start of the 21st century, if you’re not engaged with design as a (very broad) field on some level, I do kind of wonder what you’re doing with your life, apart from taking up resources that the rest of us could be making better use of.

So that’s design as idea, and design as world-shaper, which is all vitally important background, but what about aesthetics? After all, that’s what most people think of when they think of design.

Well, I only really qualified to talk about my own sense of aesthetics, and me, I’m a pretty unabashed Swiss modernist. Give me clean, clear lines, plenty of white space, and attention to simple detail in the service of clarity. Sure, I can appreciate the cluttered, hand drawn and grungy look – I quite like the work of people like Courtney Riot or Christopher Cox, but honestly, give me plain black text, well spaced, on a white background every time – a bit of simple elegance. If I had to pick my favourite font, it’d be Helevetica Neue – just about the only font face that is more precise and tidier than Helevtica.

This applies in just about everything from ink on paper to products to architecture – I love simple clear lines and an absence of clutter. Those who have seen the spaces I inhabit and the general state of my desk are probably laughing themselves sick right now, to which I can only remark that very often, really good design is an aspirational thing.

So let’s talk a little, instead, about my favourite painting, Wright of Derby’s “Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump“. Mostly, what I love about it is the quality he’s given the light. I could stare at if for hours, just contemplating the use of light and shadow in that painting. But even aside from that, I like the themes, the way the different members of the audience are reacting to the progress of science, with expressions ranging from disgust to fascination.

I like the way that all the moral outrage in the painting is reserved not for the fate of the poor bird, but for the effect that the bird’s plight is having on the people watching it – how dare this scientist cause us distress? It seems to me to sum up a lot of the problem with people’s attitude to science, which is simultaneously that it can be terribly harmful to the natural world, but that the reality is most people don’t care about the harm, as long as it doesn’t cause them distress – that there’s a basic hypocrisy inherent in denouncing science and progress while living with the comforts that it has brought us all. Most of the figures in the painting are either unbothered by what is happening, and are far more wrapped up in the other people around the experiment, in some way of form.

I particularly like the fact the of all of them, it is only the scientist who is looking out of the picture, engaging with the viewer and the wider world.

Tom Waits – “Georgia Lee”.

I’d like to talk about it, but there’s something in my eye.

Let’s start by admitting something: copyright is a good thing. That can get lost in all the shouting about piracy, and draconian measures and three strikes and creative commons and all the associated jargon. So it’s important to admit up front that copyright is a good thing, and the ideals it was created to protect are still good and valid today. We do need to provide a system to incentivise people to produce creative works, otherwise large parts of our culture will up and blow away. And it was in that spirit that copyright was first codified in England in 1709 by the Statute of Anne, or to give it it’s full title “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.” (Incidentally, in case anyone’s wondering what people did before copyright law was codified, then you’ll find that spending five minutes looking up the term “book curse” will pay interesting dividends.)

It gave creators rights over their work for 14 years after creation, and gave them the ability to extend those rights for another 14 years on application. It also expressly ensured that distributors retained no rights to control use of the material after first sale. If you bought a book, you were free to read it in public, sell it on, or use it as kindling if you so wished – so long as you didn’t make your own copies and distribute those, you were in the clear. But after that time was up, the works would pass into the public domain, for the common good.

I’m not going to bore you with the full history of copyright, I just wanted to bring up the full title of that 1709 act. The spirit in which copyright law was created was that of education, and of safeguarding the common good, to balance the rights of creators and of the public. The rights of distributors, however, were quite expressly limited.

But then, in 1709, there wasn’t a lot of demand for books. The person who printed the book was quite likely to also be the person who sold the book. And if someone in Edinburgh wanted a book that had been written in London, they either got a friend to in London to buy them a copy, or they wrote to the printer and asked them to post it. Distribution was not really something that people worried about.

But the world moved on, and a revolution or three later, people in Edinburgh expect to be able to buy not just books, but CDs and films made and published not just in London, but in New York, or Beijing or Sydney. And over the last hundred years or so, distribution has become very, very important. Entire industries have been founded on the fact that actually, the job of creating and printing something is the least difficult bit of the process, and that the hardest part was first making people aware of the product, and then getting the product into the hands of people who might want to buy it. And copyright law changed because it served the common good to ensure that the people who did the marketing and distribution were incentivised to do so.

And then we invented the internet. And now my friends can make films, and write books and record music in their own homes, and with a little effort, they can tell people all over the world about them, and they can sell them to anyone that’s interested. Suddenly, marketing and distribution are the easiest part of the process.

And that’s where things start to go wrong, because there are now entire industries that are rapidly becoming irrelevant who can only remain relevant by appointing themselves as gatekeepers of what can be done with created works. And that’s the background to the Digital Economy Bill.

I havered about what to write about here, though. I probably own more non-fiction than fiction, as long as we discount the comics, and are a little generous with the classification of some of the more lunatic bits of occult reference I own. I’ve got journalism, I’ve got reference, I’ve got history, biography, travel, collection of opinion pieces and so on and so forth.

I could spout on about HST, I could bring up the perennial bleak favourite “Dark Heart” by Nick Davies, over a decade old now, and I don’t imagine the problems it’s talking about have magically gotten better, I could even talk about one of the cookbooks I own, and almost never use.

But honestly, the single aspect of my non-fiction collection that brings me the most pleasure is the shelf full of books about London. I know, I know. I think I’ve done pretty well, so far, not banging on about London, but I’ve just made my annual pilgrimage back to Northern Ireland, and after a couple of days in a place that’s at once home and Not London, London is on my mind.

Whenever I pop into my local book store, the first place I gravitate to is the London section. I had to flee the gift shop at The Museum of London, before I had a truly ruinous shopping accident.

What I love is the diversity of books on London. There are histories, both city wide, and localised. There are books charting some trend of other, or the development of some industry. There are guidebooks up guidebooks. There are maps, both ancient and modern, there are histories of maps, there are books about London’s place in some wider context, there are books of photography, poetry and fiction.

Yes, I know they could be found for any big city. Don’t care. London’s the one that’s caught my imagination, and I am delighted that it’s a place that seems to have caught the fascination of so many others, because it means I’m never short of some new non-fiction to read.

I’ll try and be a little less predictable tomorrow.

The Sigsand Manuscript features in the stories of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson, one of a few works published roughly contemporarily with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes that I like almost as much.

The Sigsand MS, as it is generally referred to in the tales, is one of the devices that Hodgson uses to ground the tales in reality, which is sort of why I wanted to talk about it, because at first sight that sounds absurd – how can something fictional be used to ground something in reality?

Obviously, some of it is just that it’s part of the internal reality of the tales, but the greater part of its function rests in the way that it is referenced. Where Lovecraft and his inheritors tend to refer to their many, many fictional texts (and this was very nearly a piece on the cultural importance of the Necronomicon) in tones of hushed dread, as rare and special things whose secrets were enough drive men mad, Hodgson’s characters refer to the Sigsand MS as common knowledge, at least among themselves – talking of it’s contents like “The Saamaa ritual” as things that they are all familiar with the detail of. While it contains information that is obviously fantastic, information on how to deal with the supernatural, it is always referenced in terms that make it seem as if all the characters already know this information, and whenever Carnacki is called upon within the stories to draw on it’s contents, it is always in the sense of falling back on a familiar set of tools. Even in extremity, when Carnacki is in great peril, and an unknown agency recites the most secret of the lore in the MS “The unknown last line of the Saamaa ritual”, the description of the consequences given is:

“Instantly the thing happened that I have heard once before”

Even the ultimate secret is something Carnacki has felt before. This is a known, if impressive and fearsome quantity.

Further, its contents are not entirely presented as mystic, but as something that can be employed as reliably as any scientific method, and often within the trappings of science – Carnicki uses an electric pentagram, and develops a thing he calls “the spectrum defense” – bands of projected colour – as a means of combating the supernatural.

There are Carnacki stories in which his science fails him, but invariably in these stories he turns out not to be fighting the supernatural at all, but rather the monster or haunting turns out to be a hoax.

And so it grounds the works in a reality, where laws and the scientific method apply, and indeed triumph of legend, myth and the irrational. And in the process, Hodgson takes his place toward the head of an entire cannon of fantastic literature, where the fantastic is treated as just another science, with rules and principles that can be taken from one form, and reapplied in another – one can draw a line from the likes of Hodgson and Carnacki, right through to Mieville and the biothaumaturges and punishment factories of his fantasy world of Bas-Lag. And this is important, because it’s this willingness to treat the fantastic are very real, rather than a thing to wondered at in and of itself that allows for the better brand of fantasy that is used, like the best SF, as a tool to examine our present condition, as opposed to looking back, in the manner of Tolkien, or Lewis, at some pastoral idyll, or religious mythology.

Privacy is well on course to being the major social issue of the next decade on a number of levels. It’s being suggested that what we do on the internet should be constantly monitored, because we might be doing something illegal. And Eric Schmidt up there believes that if we’re doing something that would bother us if it became public, then we should not be doing that at all.

Any of you know someone who’s in the closet? Any of you know someone who is, at the least, not out to a certain group of their friends or acquaintances? Any of you have a fetish that you’d rather not admit to any of your friends? Any of you have a fetish you’d rather your work colleagues did not know about? Yeah, I know – there are none of us who could really withstand the level of public scrutiny that Mr Schmidt and our lawmakers think we should be able to endure.

Now, I’m sure there are people out there who might be thinking “if only people were more able to be open about sex – I do nothing I am ashamed of. I’m not even ashamed of the thing with the wetsuit, the goat and the tub of creme fraiche” and heralding the end of privacy as a sign of increasing social enlightenment – if everything is public, there’ll be no need to be ashamed, and so on.

Those people are wrong. Privacy is vital. I only used sex as an example there because it’s one everyone can relate on a very basic level, regardless of social, economic or technological status. I’m going to continue using it as an example, because I think everyone can relate to it, but the need for privacy could equally apply to health issues, money, politics, religion, or really, anything that is a common experience, but that could also be used to mark us out as different. But to return to my point: on a very basic level, we also need privacy, and I’m going to waffle on at length about why.

Human beings are social animals. It’s why we worry about things like “fitting in”. Fitting in, being part of the herd, has both evolutionary advantages and some serious drawbacks. Obviously, you get the bonus of strength in numbers, and readily available sexual partners, but the flip side is too much pressure to fit in has the unfortunate effect of stifling innovation. And so we’ve adapted – we do need to fit in, we need to affirm our place within society, and we also need “alone time”. As much as we need to fit in, we also space, both physical and cognitive, that is defined as our own, space away from the crowd.

One of the ways we secure that space, particularly cognitively, is by managing information according to a level of trust – we reveal what we are thinking only to those we trust, as a means of testing out our ideas, before bringing them into the wider social unit – to check that those ideas won’t have negative consequences for our place in the group dynamic. And depending on how important, how personal those issues are to us, we reveal them to fewer and fewer people.

To return to my earlier example I, personally, do not think anyone needs to know what I might enjoy getting up to in the bedroom, so I generally keep my mouth shut on the subject. My closer friends may have picked up some hints, here and there, but I doubt any of them could tell you in any detail about things I enjoy, or experiences I have had. Which is the way I want it – not because I am ashamed of it or uncomfortable with the topics, but simply because most people have no need to know. And if they don’t need to know, why would I tell them? Telling people things they don’t need to know isn’t “being open/liberated/free/honest/insert word that hippies like here”, at least not as far as I’m concerned. I file it under “being pointless”. It’s tipping the signal to noise ratio in favour of noise.

There’s also a broader social management going on in what we chose to reveal to who – it’s partly a combination of trust, and partly to do with the ways we categorise the people we know.

On the trust front, if someone else displays a willingness to be open and public with certain information about their life, then I am going to think twice before I share information about myself on related topics with them. Whether I can trust them or not is irrelevant – they clearly don’t accord it the same level of importance that I do, and might therefore share my confidence with someone else, without stopping to think about whether or not I would consider it appropriate. And I am likewise made uncomfortable when others share information with me that I would not share with them – to me it speaks of a level of closeness that I do not wish to have, or perhaps do not wish to have yet – they may not consider a certain level of detail to be an intimate confidence, but I do and it is the perceived imbalance that is the source of my discomfort, rather than the topics themselves – it is as if they are presuming a level of friendship without going through the steps that would normally build that same level, skipping the intermediate levels of confidence, proclaiming a level of trust in me that I feel unable to reciprocate.

But that’s all to do with levels of trust. But there’s also kinds of trust. My clients at work need to be able to trust that I will work hard on their behalf, with honesty and discretion. Which means, in fact, that if they learn about my personal life if I share to a level they consider inappropriate, then they’re going to doubt my discretion. And the same is true of my friends, who need to be able to trust in other things about me, so it’s appropriate to share different things with them, and the same is true of my family, or even just something as simple as the players in my roleplaying games, who may be my friends, but who also have to feel able trust in certain of my character traits, so I need to present myself in certain ways to them.

All of which will be undermined, if, as Mr Schmidt is suggesting, privacy goes the way of the dodo, because if I can nothing my clients won’t approve of, then I can’t do much that my friends will like, either.

Now, most of what I’ve talked about here goes on at a level below conscious thought. By the time we reach adulthood, it is learned, and long practiced social behaviour. We do it without thinking – I’m only spelling it out here because it’s relevant to the subject of privacy, because if we have no privacy, then we lack the means to manage our social bonds in the way we choose. Without privacy, you don’t get intimacy. If you share everything with everyone, willingly or otherwise, without thought for context, then what you share with your nearest or dearest is no longer special.

I have no idea if any of that was sensible, or even coherent. But I need got get this posted today, so that’s what you’ve got for now. I’d be interested to hear anyone else’s thoughts on the subject.

When I was younger, I was a boy scout. Stop laughing at the back – I looked good in a woggle. The scout master may have been a little archaicaly homophobic, but he ended every meeting with the words “You live as a result of your actions, and you are judged by the company you keep.” It’s something that still informs how I pick my friends.

So what does friendship means to me? Well, to state the obvious, every friendship is different. Some of my friends, I see once in a blue moon, and it’s like no time has passed – we fall easily back into our friendship, and the conversation flows freely. Other friends, I see regularly, and yet every time, there’s a certain hurdle of not really quite knowing how to start talking to be overcome – like we’re both looking for the level, and not quite sure where it is.

I’ve got friends where I feel like I put more effort into the friendship, and friends where I know they’re the one doing all the work (and I feel bad about that). There are people I’ve met in the last year who are close friends, and friends I’ve known for a very long time who I keep at arms length.

One of the ways people define friendship is how far you would put yourself out for another person. Like, I think, most people, I have a small group of people that could call me up at any time, and I’d drop whatever I was doing if they needed a hand. Except, well…

Everyone says things like that. The truth, I think, is more complex. Because it’s easy to drop things if they’re just things for me, but as soon as other people are involved, well, that changes the equation. And that’s where friendship comes into it. Because honestly, if any of my friends asked for my help, my time, and giving it wouldn’t interfere with any plans but my own, well, how could I refuse? But suppose that interferes with plans made with another friend? Or more complicated yet, what if it interferes with helping another friend. Or with plans with groups of friends?

It’s not just about how your prioritise your own time – it’s about how you prioritise other people’s time and needs. And honestly, that’s the measure I tend to use for friendship – I try to place the same importance on someone else’s time that they appear to place on mine. So that means there are people I see once in a blue moon who are still very close friends, because I know that while neither of us has lots of time to see the other, when we do make the time, it’ll be a solid priority for both of us, and if they called up needing a hand, I’d clear my calendar for them. And there are people I see regularly who clearly can’t be arsed to actually make time, who routinely show up late, or cancel at the last minute, and while they’re still my friends, they’re not people who I would cancel plans for except in direst need.

There’s a chance that that last line has stung a few people reading this. It’s happened to me a bit of late, friends not showing up when they said they would, so if you’re worrying that this bit was aimed at you, well, you’re wrong. It wasn’t aimed at all. I don’t like you any less, I’m not having a dig. I really am just answering a question, and explaining a bit about what friendship means to me. I am absolutely certain that I fall short of my own standards, and that I have friends who think that I’m unreliable, that I’m never around, or things like that, and I am sorry for that (but on the other hand – make actual in-the-diary plans with me, and you’ll probably find I show up). This is not about what anyone else does, it’s about what I try to live up to.

Ultimately, friendship means being someone that someone else can rely on. Common interests, a shared sense of humour, these are the things that start a friendship, and without them, there’s not likely to be one. But if I am to be judged by the company I keep, then I want the company I keep to be reliable. You don’t need to always be around, you don’t need to expend lots of effort keeping in touch, because god knows, I probably won’t. But you do need to be someone who can be relied on to hold your end up when it actually counts.

Yes, I know the first two were also photos that I took. This one, you can just think of as “A photo you’d like to post”. This one I’m not quite as happy with as I am the previous two – the picture is off enough in very small ways that it bugs me – the seagull, the lack of perfect alignment, the little toning dodges I’ve had to apply, and so on. But given that it was essentially a snap I managed to get on the off-chance, in a two second window before someone walking behind me came into shot, and spoiled the rest of the effect, I’m still happy enough with it. One day, I’ll get around to getting up at 6am on a Saturday, and getting up there before anyone else is around, so I can take my time over it, and retake the thing. But until then, this is the best version of the shot that I’ve got, and I for all it frustrates me, I’m very happy I managed to get it.

I did consider using some news photography here – a famous photo of some atrocity or other, something like that – and talking about how angry it makes me, and generally using to day to raise awareness of something, but to be quite honest with you, I’m just not in the mood to get that worked up at the moment about things I don’t have to.

So instead, here’s another old photo of mine. The photo doesn’t really make me sad in and of itself, but I think the narrative it suggests – someone stopping to reflect on a blue heart on a wall must have a reason to do so, surely – hints at a sadness. Again, I’m just generally happy with this shot – there’s not really much I would have changed or done differently now.