Symbolic Forest

At the office, we often get random pieces of promotional crap sent to us by companies touting for business. The best so far: an “emergency phone kit” from O2.^* The latest: a pen from Openreach. If you’ve not heard of Openreach yet: they’re the chunk of British Telecom that actually gets to play with wiring and hardware, and ends up doing all the manual work.

Openreach’s PR people clearly aren’t as imaginative as O2’s, because they’ve sent us a ballpoint pen. One of those pens with a moving picture inside, that slides from one end to the other when the pen’s tilted. Rather than go for the classic “woman whose bra and knickers disappear” design, their pen has a background of terraced houses, and an Openreach van chugging from one end to the other.

So far, so boring. This pen, though, is ideal to represent BT.^** Because of the speed the van moves: chug chug chug, dead slow along the line of houses. Perfectly representing the speed it takes BT to do pretty much anything.^*** Ideal publicity material!

* A piece of string, and a capped cardboard tube marked with a “cut here” line around the middle.

** Or, “Openreach, a part of the BT group”, as it says on their promotional bumpf

*** To be honest, I have found one part of BT that does what you ask, quickly, and gets it right first time: whatever office it is sets up reverse DNS information for ADSL lines with static IP addresses. If you do not know what this means, rest assured you will never need to get in touch with them. Oh, and if you know anyone who works for BT: they have a special staff-only customer service number which allegedly gets better service than the ordinary one, and if you have a problem they can call it up on your behalf.

Keyword noise: advertising, British Telecom, BT, junk mail, Openreach.

Musicology news of the week: the discovery by a Manchester University academic, Rebecca Herissone, that one of the best known pieces by composer Henry Purcell was largely rewritten seventy years after Purcell’s death, and that the original version is probably lost.

She’s only guessing, of course. Her logic goes: the only copy we have of Purcell’s Come Ye Sons Of Art was written out in 1765, by a chap who rewrote several other pieces by Purcell. So, he probably rewrote this one too. Circumstantial, but there you go. She has “reconstructed the original”, which was relatively easy because the rewriter wasn’t a very good composer himself.^*

Quite apart from the slightly spurious validity of her reconstruction – given that she’s producing what she thinks Purcell himself ought to have originally written, isn’t there a risk of her producing a pastiche herself? – what amuses me is the idea that bad remixers have been around on the musical scene for years. It’s nice to know that the bad cover version isn’t something that’s only been around for fifty years.

* I’m going by what she said in a radio interview this morning, on Radio 4. But if the second composer was so awful, how come his version has been one of the most popular “Purcell” pieces ever since?

Keyword noise: Baroque music, circumstantial, Come Ye Sons Of Art, Henry Purcell, music, pastiche, Rebecca Herissone, remix, Robert Pindar.

I got an email from Tony Blair today. Yes, Tony Blair. See, I must be important.

You know that anti-road-pricing petition that’s been spammed all over the net^* recently? And how Tony Blair was going to respond personally? Well, I’ve already had an email from him. So there.

It’s because of a petition I’d entirely forgotten about signing, about how ID cards are a bad idea, won’t work, and will waste billions of pounds. Tony Blair wrote to tell me just how great they are, and how my participation in democracy is so important that he’s going to ignore me personally. Not just any of that old generic ignoring that everyone else gets, you understand. Personal service.

I feel touched. No, honest. See, with modern communication, the Prime Minister can tell me, personally, how he’s going to ignore what everyone else in the country wants. Now that’s what I call democracy.

* well, the British bits of it

Keyword noise: communication, democracy, ID cards, participation, personal service, petition, Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

The end of another week, and it’s been an enjoyable one for a change. Work: not too stressful. Life: rather nice, in fact.

The only thing about work: I wish that I could regularly work a four day week, like I did this week. My day off was lovely: a lazy lie-in, breakfast at the Wetherspoons on Carr Lane, a bit of a potter round town, and dinner out at a rather nice restaurant. It’s a shame I can’t have a day like that every week.

Today, as you can tell, must be Colon Day.

Tonight, I have mostly been marvelling at some origami crease patterns,^* and trying to see if I can see any link at all between the pattern and the finished design. In general, I can’t see any connection, and it leaves me wondering who on earth could read a complex mass of geometrical lines and see that it folds up into a tiny little ornament.

* link via but she’s a girl…

Keyword noise: holiday, Hull, origami.

Given that today, in the news, there’s rather a lot about the slowly-growing and now likely forthcoming schism in the Anglican church, I thought I’d ask the average churchgoer in the street about it. Well, the average churchgoer who is also my mother, at any rate. She’s a fairly average “active” Anglican, though. She’s white, lower-middle-class, female, edging towards elderly, lives in a commuter village, and goes to church every week. She’s a Sunday School teacher, has organised the parish’s Christian Aid collections, sings in an ecumenical Christian parish singing group,^* and generally is far more active and puts more effort into religion than most churchgoers, never mind the huge percentage of Anglicans who tick the relevant box on the census but never cross the threshold of a church for anything other than weddings and funerals.

So, I said: “what are you going to do if the church splits in two? Is anyone going to leave St. Nick’s over it?”

Her answer: “What split?”

“You know, the one that has been rumbling for the last few years.” I tried to explain how the rather homophobic Peter Akinola is a figurehead for a group of largely-American homophobic conservatives, who do not like the Archbishop of Canterbury and have been threatening for some time to lead a schism, sometimes in the hope of bending him to their will, sometimes apparently meaning it.

“I’ve not heard about any of that,” she said. “We don’t talk about that sort of thing at church. That’s nothing to do with us.”

So, there you have it. I don’t think The Mother is particularly ignorant. As I said above, I think she’s probably less ignorant than your average churchgoer is likely to be, because she takes a very active interest. But to her, the politicking of a motley band of Americans and Africans isn’t important. An earthquake in Lambeth Palace isn’t important. The Second Coming occurring in the Lady Chapel of our parish church probably wouldn’t disturb most of the congregation, so long as it didn’t disrupt the Mothers Union or the bellringers, and everyone still got a cup of tea (or coffee) after the Sunday communion service. For your average English Anglican, dogma is something you recite during the service without really listening or understanding. It certainly isn’t something to get all argumentative about.

* where “ecumenical” means “Anglican and Methodist”, because they’re the only churches in the village. I’m not sure what they’ll do if those often-suggested plans to subsume British Methodists back into Anglicanism ever make much progress.

Keyword noise: Anglicanism, Christianity, church, conservatism, gay rights, homophobia, parish church, Peter Akinola, religion, Rowan Williams, schism, The Mother.

This morning, I was driving to work, slightly earlier than normal, through the dawn. Going down Boothferry Road, I could see the crescent moon large and low in the sky, and I suddenly realised how beautiful the morning sky looked. How beautiful the world can appear all of a sudden.

Keyword noise: beauty, Hull, moon, morning, dawn, Yorkshire.

Now, I know we haven’t seen the slightest bit of snow here in the Forest this week. But even so, I don’t see why it’s a major news story just because it happens in London. I suppose, as Diamond Geezer pointed out, there’s a good chance this will be the last time London ever gets heavy snow, so I suppose they should all make the most of it.

At least I’m off to Wooldale tonight, so I should see plenty. Just so long as I can get home again afterwards.

Keyword noise: snow, weather, winter.

Archaeology news story of the week: British pagans have decided that archaeologist should hand prehistoric skeletons over to them for reburial. Which is, of course, a silly idea, and one that a lot of archaeologists have a problem with.

Archaeologists naturally tend towards conservation. It’s something that’s drummed into them all through their training: you can only dig something up the once, so once you have it in your hands you have to look after it. You store it away carefully, because you never know when you’ve managed to extract all possible information from it. That’s why throwing something away – and that’s what reburial amounts to in many ways – is anathema to an archaeologist. To most practical archaeologists, artefacts like skeletons are a bit of a nuisance. If you’re in the field, they lead to lots and lots of paperwork.^* If you’re back at the lab, you have to look after them – artefact aftercare ends up costing about ten times as much as your average dig does, at the least.^** But you still have to look after them, because otherwise you’re not really an archaeologist.

A pagan quoted in that article says:

Any story that is reconstructed from [prehistoric skeletons] will be an imagined past, which usually turns out to be a blueprint of the present imposed upon the past

Which is, indeed, true. But it’s also true of modern pagan religions, to be fair. Modern paganism is an entirely modern religion. It draws influences from prehistoric religions, but so do other modern-day religions such as Mormonism. There’s very little direct link between any religion today and any European religion of three thousand years ago, so any claim of continuity is rather suspect. For one thing, there’s a huge variety of religious practise in British prehistory, which suggests that religions changed in nature over time then just as they do now. At some times people were buried in graves as they are now; at some times they were buried, or exposed, and then their skeletons were taken apart and stacked up somewhere.^*** At some times, they were cremated. Sometimes they were buried in a “partially articulated” state – which means the body was still meaty enough for some of the major joints to hold together, but rotten enough for some big bits to have dropped off. In East Yorkshire, rich people were buried in chariots; which just goes to show that people from East Yorkshire have always been slightly strange.^****

Which of those different types of burial represents different religions? It’s hard to say, because religion doesn’t always determine burial type. Which of them represents any of the various strands of modern paganism? None of the above. There’s no reason why remains shouldn’t be treated with respect; but equally there’s no reason why any modern religion should claim to have responsibility over them.

* especially for skeletons, because there’s all sorts of legal paperwork to fill in to prove you didn’t just bury the body the other week.

** and digs are bloody expensive

*** this, with burial, is more or less what happened from medieval times through to the 18th century; it was only after that that people started to see the grave as “eternal rest”.

**** no, really, the Iron Age archaeology of East Yorkshire really is rather distinct, and different to anywhere else in the whole of Britain.

Keyword noise: archaeology, artefacts, burial, conservation, curation, East Yorkshire, funerals, human remains, paganism, prehistory, preservation, reburial, religion, ritual, skeletons, Yorkshire.

As the song goes.^*

* You know, that song by that woman from Carlisle.

Keyword noise: Dawlish, Devon, English Channel, geology, photography, railway, sandstone, sea, seaside, Teignmouth.

I wish I carried my camera around with me everywhere. I don’t, because it’s too large and heavy and valuable to take it everywhere with me. There are so many pictures I wish I could have caught, which I’ve missed. I used to keep a sketchbook with very rough sketches of some of them, all far better photos than any of the ones I’ve taken.

This morning, driving to work, through the Western Fields. Mist and fog were hugging the ground, up to about five feet. Above it trees and bushes were breaking through, black silhouettes, and above that dawn through the clouds. It’s rare for the morning to look so beautiful.

Keyword noise: dawn, fog, ink polaroids, landscape, mist, winter, weather.