Symbolic Forest

Was over in the Republic of Hull at the weekend, and popped in a pub in the city centre, called Ye Olde White Harte.^* It’s a very old pub indeed, full of tiny rooms, alleged ghosts and dark wood panelling, and it’s been on the site for around five hundred years or so. Back in the seventeeth century the Siege Of Hull, one of the opening skirmishes of the Civil War, kicked off in the upstairs room of the pub.^**

I was in the pub to go to a meeting, in the aforesaid upstairs room, with swords on the wall and portraits of men in seventeeth-century styles. Just as you could imagine it being back in the civil war, in fact. We sat around having our meeting, just like the seventeenth-century city leaders plotting to change the government whilst downing jars of ale. But, of course, there was a little sign on the wall next to the swords: “found during the Victorian restoration”.

Like many buildings of its age, not much of the Olde White Harte is genuine. It might be a genuine sixteenth-century pub, but much of the interior will have been redone in the 19th century, if not since, to look like the modern ideal of a genuine sixteenth-century pub. For one thing, bars were only invented in the 19th century, in railway station refreshment rooms. I have no idea what it would have actually looked like when first built, but almost certainly not how it does today.

* I don’t see why they can’t call it the Old White Hart, but apparently it’s tradition or something.

** Well, they didn’t exactly start a bar-room fight with the King, but it was where the city leaders decided to bar the gates to the royal army.

Keyword noise: architecture, buildings, civil war, English Civil War, Hull, pubs, restoration, Victorian, White Harte, Yorkshire.

Update on Wednesday’s post: the piano atop Ben Nevis may have been identified. Or maybe not. Maybe large keyboard instruments have been carried to the top of Ben Nevis several times; nobody has any idea, to be honest. Which is probably as it should be.

Meanwhile, in the news – and in just about every news outlet you care to name – a BDSM-related “sex cult” has been uncovered in Darlington.^* To be honest, after reading round it all I feel slightly sorry for the chap who runs the place. He seems to have been quite open about what he was doing, leading his girlfriend around on a leash in public and all, and seems to have been a bit surprised that the press have got a bit excited over it all. Personally, I don’t think he’s doing anything wrong. Gor isn’t my kink, but if that’s what people want to do, then let them.

* As I said, this story is everywhere at the moment, but I’m linking to The Guardian‘s version because it has the best headline.

Keyword noise: bdsm, Ben Nevis, Darlington, Gor, piano, Scotland, sex cult.

…is a phrase I never really understood.

It’s a sudden flashback I had today, to old sitcoms, particularly Croft-Perry sitcoms like Allo Allo and Hi-de-Hi. They didn’t end with your standard telly credits. They ended with “You have been watching…”, and everybody would suddenly come out of character, break the fourth wall and wave at the camera.

Presumably it’s a stage thing adapted for the telly. Even when young, though, I found it rather disruptive. I didn’t want to be shown these people were actors. I wanted to suspend my disbelief all week until the next episode. Moreover, I wasn’t always sure what the names of all the characters were. I wanted to read the credits and find out!

Keyword noise: Allo Allo, comedy, fourth wall, end credits, Hi-de-Hi, sitcom, television.

In the news today: a piano has been found on top of Ben Nevis. Whether this is really news, and whether noone knew about it before now, is rather debatable,^* but at least the mountain’s owners will be pleased with all the publicity.

Maybe the Ben Nevis litter-pickers should turn their attention to Snowdonia instead. There’s a rumour that some evil prankster dumped an ugly café near the summit of Snowdon in the distant past, but noone has ever managed to find it since.

* This originally linked to a couple of items on the internet indicating that the piano had probably been known about by walkers and climbers well before it made it into the papers, but both seem to have now disappeared.

Keyword noise: Ben Nevis, piano, publicity, Scotland, Yr Wyddfa, Snowdon, Eryri, Snowdonia.

I said on Friday that the homophobic branch manager at the Another Part Of The Forest branch had quit his job. He said at the time that he had another job lined up, but was being rather taciturn and evasive about what it might be.

Well, the latest gossip is that he doesn’t have a job lined up at all as such – he’s going to go out and set up his own business, doing exactly what he’s been doing for us all along; the day before he left, he printed out a full dump of all his office’s sales contacts from the database. His division are all going into a panic, worried all their business in Another Part Of The Forest is going to float away and follow him, just like that. I’m just wondering how long he’s going to last. I know how bad he is at keeping track of paperwork, and I know, from reading his memos, that he has trouble writing an understandable coherent sentence. I’m tempted to open a book, around the office, on how long before his business disappears again.

Keyword noise: colleagues, competition, gossip.

Do you like it when random people from your past bump into you in the street?

In my case, I generally don’t think I do want to get in touch with many more people from my past. All the friends I wouldn’t want to lose, I’m still in touch with; I still see them at least every year or so. The rest of my schoolfriends, to be honest, I don’t particularly care about. It might sound harsh, but it’s true. If I’d wanted to stay in touch with them, I could have done.

I’m thinking about this now, because yesterday afternoon I was sitting in a pub, having a bit of a munch with a few friends, when some random people start pushing their car into the car park. They come into the pub, and idle time away by the bar waiting for the AA to arrive. I glance at them and don’t think anything of it; but then, listening in, I suddenly recognise one of their voices. I sneak another look: it’s someone I knew fairly well at school.

I hesitated for a moment. But I didn’t particularly want to talk to him. I last saw him ten years ago, and have barely thought about him since. I didn’t want to tell him how my life is going now, what I’ve been up to, who these friends I’m with are, how I know them.

I looked up for a moment, and caught him looking at me, as if he was trying to place where he’d seen me before. I turned back to my friends, and back to the conversation.

Keyword noise: coincidence, past, people, school, acquaintances, surprise.

It’s the end of the week again. It’s hot, and sunny, and I’ve just been zooming up and down the motorway to Another Part Of The Forest and back. Windows wound down, music on, it really does leave me feeling cheerful.^*

Things seem to be changing all around me. I’ve always taken a vicarious interest in seeing other people become magically happy. There are a handful of people I know, and several people I don’t know whose blogs I read, whose lives and relationships are changing in wonderful ways. Some of them are completely positive they’re doing the right thing, some of them less so, but in general they do seem to be brimming with happiness.^**

I arrived back at the office just now, planning this post, to sit down and write it during my lunch break. As soon as I sat back at my desk, the homophobic branch manager from Another Part Of The Forest came through to say hello. “I’m leaving,” he said.

“Back off to your branch?” I knew he’d been over at head office this morning.

“No, completely. I handed my notice in last night, and I’m leaving now.”

Which, really, fitted in with everything I’ve been thinking about. People all around me are all having their lives changed.

Another beautiful thing I’ve seen: driving home from York at about midnight Wednesday night, past the steelworks. Something was going on there, because the whole place was lit up in an orange flaming glow. Industrial beauty, almost as inspiring as seeing a happy person.

* but I try not to think about all those carbon emissions.

** I know blogs aren’t real life, of course. People withhold things. And if you’re worried I’m talking about you: I might be, but I’m not trying to make a comment about your own specific situation. This is about everyone in general.

Keyword noise: career, change, happiness, relationships.

Today, in the news, reports will be released stating that the July 7th attacks^* were not preventable.

That in itself stirs up all sorts of thoughts and feelings, but I don’t want to write about those just now. What I want to talk about is the phrase there “will be released”. The habit people have of saying: “later, I’m going to tell you this”

When I say “people”, I don’t mean ordinary people, of course. It’s something I mostly notice politicians doing, but I presume they were poked into it by their PR people. I’m sure that companies also send out press releases saying “later, we’re going to tell you this“, but when ordinary companies do it it doesn’t make the news.

I’m sure there was a time when people listened with bated breath to, say, the keynote speech at a party conference, waiting together to hear it for the first time. Nowadays, though, it doesn’t happen – the synopsis, or at least the speech itself, is always released beforehand. Nothing is a surprise, because everyone watching already knows what the speaker is going to tell them – it was on that morning’s news. This is, I think, yet another reason why the ordinary public cares less and less about politics.^** There’s no real reason to do it, given the speed of modern newsgathering. The only reason it’s done as standard, I suspect, is that most publically-visible politics^*** now is just another branch of PR, and putting out a synoptic press release in advance is standard PR practice.

It’ll never happen, but I just wish that for once, a politician would get up on stage, in front of the autocue, and say: “This morning, all the news reports said I was going to tell you X, Y and Z. Well, I’m not. That’s all nonsense, in fact; I just wanted to make sure all the correspondants listen to my speeches properly in future. What I’m actually going to talk about is…” It may never happen, but it would be wonderful if it did.

* “attacks” is such a nice euphemism for “death and destruction caused by psychotically religious madmen”, don’t you think?

** The Budget is one of the last big speeches or reports not to be released to the press in advance – and that may be partly why it’s still the biggest political event of the year.

*** Most consultation and bill-writing goes on discreetly behind the scenes, after all.

Keyword noise: July 7th, media, PR, press release, public relations, terrorism.

As I still occasionally have visitors searching for information on Christopher Edward Buckingham, I thought I should probably let you know that his real identity has been uncovered. His “real” name is Charles Albert Stopford, and he was originally from Clearwater, Florida. Given the people Clearwater is most famous for, you can see why he might want to move as far away as he could.

I say “real” in quotes, because, if he’s been Chris Buckingham for 20-something years now – half of his life, more or less – surely that has just as much claim to being his real name? It might be founded on a lie, but you can’t say that the things he’s done as Chris Buckingham, the friendships and relationships he’s made, just happened to somebody else all along. Identity is a many-layered thing.

Keyword noise: Charles Stopford, Christopher Buckingham, disappear, disguise, identity.

Via Boing Boing, I’ve discovered a Wired article on RFID hacking, and how it can be used practically for breaking and entering. I can virtually see your eyes glazing over already: but, see, this is important to me at least. The security technologies described in the article are suspiciously like the ones which have recently been installed in the office at great expense.

Now, it is possible that our security consultant has installed the extra-secure encrypted systems described in the article, that are much harder to break into. Given that I’ve had to work with him, though, I’d be surprised if he even realised the difference between the two. I really must show this to Big Dave, and see if we can get our hands on the RFID-reading kit described, if only because it will really irritate Security Man.

Keyword noise: locks, RFID, security, technology.