Time flies when I’m sitting at the PC. Time passes slowly when I am in a waiting room. Time goes in a flash, sometimes, but drags at others. Everyone knows this and relates to it.
But we assume it’s just a perception, and not literal. Why? Suppose it’s real? It seems real enough to all of us, and happens consistently, and to everyone, so what’s the definition of reality that excludes such a consistently real event?
I don’t sit at the PC and suddenly find myself 10 feet to the left of where I was when I started – but I do find that an hour appears to have passed when I only experienced a few minutes. I wasn’t travelling near the speed of light...
Suppose there is a second time dimension, orthogonal to the one we’re familiar with – the usual one that is part of the 4D physical space-time world. Suppose we are travelling along both time axes, so making an analogy to a 2D X/Y frame, we are travelling along a gradient with respect to both time axes – i.e. a component of our personal time is along both. Now suppose increased brain activity affects our direction of travel and moves us closer to the normal time dimension, then the component of our personal time in that axis increases – the projected component is greater. The effect then is that ‘normal’ time appears to have passed much faster...
Or maybe time doesn’t exist at all? It’s just a perception?
Saturday, 24 September 2011
Thursday, 22 September 2011
Down The Dun Cow
I was in The Dun Cow because I hadn't gone to the monthly meeting of the cynical negativists society - why bother?
Anyway, their ping-pong table was broken...
"The geese are flying South and it's a bad summer for leeks" advised the ginger-bearded Franciscan monk in the corner, over his pint of stout and copy of The Racing Post. Inspector Birkett (master of disguises) had cunningly started using coded phrases, so we would still know it was him.
"If you ask me..." declamed Jack Hatcher, vegetarian pork butcher and latent politician, who had never actually waited for anyone to ask him anything, "...that monk looks a bit dodgy."
"I think it's Inspector Birkett..." started his wife, Blanche, timidly.
"Away, woman!" interrupted Jack. "You know your trouble, Rose? You get everything wrong!"
The new barmaid at The Dun Cow was blond and nearly six feet of violin shape, and it followed therefore that Herbert Mangle the Wallsend poet and hypothetical metrosexual, had fallen instantly in love with her.
O pass me my glass, fair amazon lass
May our love, like it, never be empty
And shine like that brass, be fine as this Bass
But...er... didn't I give you a twenty?
Sadly, not yet fully understanding English, Ulrika still gave him a completely undeserved smile, and completely deserved change from a tenner, and left him sighing into his glass. Still, as Shaw remarked, 'What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do'.
"If you ask me..." informed Jack Hatcher, "...people these days don't have enough to do, Mavis!"
Blanche didn't answer, as she was blinking demurely at Herbert Mangle, whose roving spirit (and eye) was inspirationally seeking a new folly.
Jack would have declamed to the barmaid, but she was disappearing out the back with Inspector Birkett to discuss the finer details of expired work permits.
I'd have stayed for a pint, but, you know, someone is always trying to talk to you - and you can never get served, can you? I should have gone to the cynical negativists meeting after all, but I'm always rubbish at ping-pong...
Anyway, their ping-pong table was broken...
"The geese are flying South and it's a bad summer for leeks" advised the ginger-bearded Franciscan monk in the corner, over his pint of stout and copy of The Racing Post. Inspector Birkett (master of disguises) had cunningly started using coded phrases, so we would still know it was him.
"If you ask me..." declamed Jack Hatcher, vegetarian pork butcher and latent politician, who had never actually waited for anyone to ask him anything, "...that monk looks a bit dodgy."
"I think it's Inspector Birkett..." started his wife, Blanche, timidly.
"Away, woman!" interrupted Jack. "You know your trouble, Rose? You get everything wrong!"
The new barmaid at The Dun Cow was blond and nearly six feet of violin shape, and it followed therefore that Herbert Mangle the Wallsend poet and hypothetical metrosexual, had fallen instantly in love with her.
O pass me my glass, fair amazon lass
May our love, like it, never be empty
And shine like that brass, be fine as this Bass
But...er... didn't I give you a twenty?
Sadly, not yet fully understanding English, Ulrika still gave him a completely undeserved smile, and completely deserved change from a tenner, and left him sighing into his glass. Still, as Shaw remarked, 'What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do'.
"If you ask me..." informed Jack Hatcher, "...people these days don't have enough to do, Mavis!"
Blanche didn't answer, as she was blinking demurely at Herbert Mangle, whose roving spirit (and eye) was inspirationally seeking a new folly.
Jack would have declamed to the barmaid, but she was disappearing out the back with Inspector Birkett to discuss the finer details of expired work permits.
I'd have stayed for a pint, but, you know, someone is always trying to talk to you - and you can never get served, can you? I should have gone to the cynical negativists meeting after all, but I'm always rubbish at ping-pong...
I remember
Oh – I remember
And remember and remember
You have the time, on your own
Between drinking, sleeping, and working
They each blot out some memories for a while
But then you remember –
The world in blazing colours
Being alive – and glowing
Every second slowed down – and tasted
A dimension to reality that never existed before
That coming home, end of a quest, Spencer-The-Rover-returned feeling
And you just want to forget
Because you can’t bear it to be a memory.
Oh yes -
I remember.
And remember and remember
You have the time, on your own
Between drinking, sleeping, and working
They each blot out some memories for a while
But then you remember –
The world in blazing colours
Being alive – and glowing
Every second slowed down – and tasted
A dimension to reality that never existed before
That coming home, end of a quest, Spencer-The-Rover-returned feeling
And you just want to forget
Because you can’t bear it to be a memory.
Oh yes -
I remember.
Saturday, 10 September 2011
What's Up, Doc?
14th Jan 2009
“Hmmm. Let’s do some tests.”
We did blood tests, blood pressure tests, we did a chest x-ray (?), we searched on-line on ‘Puffy Feet for Dummies’... and at the end of two months the conclusion was:
“Why don’t you try sitting differently?”
Hmmm....
Recently, I had some pains in the lower abdomen/groin region, so off I went to the new quack, the old one having left, (or maybe he is just lost, endlessly cycling the M25, unable to find his exit?)
“Hmmm, well one thing it definitely is not is a hernia”, he said, after more tests.
“Let’s get the consultant to look at you, eh?”.
A month later, the consultant was too busy, so his registrar saw me.
“Hmmm, it’s definitely a hernia.”
Oh yeah?
“We’d better do some tests”.
Another month later I had an ultrasound visual examination, which was interesting. My (ahem) ‘lower abdomen’ was liberally covered in jelly and they did a live scan, watching a monitor. I fought back the overwhelming desire to ask ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ (it probably wouldn’t be the first time they’d heard that one, eh?). Nothing there.
“We’d better do a colonoscopy - and have a little look around”.
Oh good.
Another month and it was time for the camera up the bum. Now the worst thing about this, I found out, is simply the laxatives you have to take the day before - they’re the industrial strength ones... The hospital visit, however, was great. First came the cabaret. As I was scheduled to be the last to go into surgery, I watched others return, still drugged and out of it, and more accurately, listened to them return. Jings - it was like the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles, but under blanket. A ward full of farting in various keys - tenor farts, alto trills and others, more 'basso profundo', shook the beds. I had to give up pretending to read the ‘paper and just hide my head for a while...
Eventually it was my turn and I was wheeled in. I watched, fascinated, as five different injections went into my arm and was just about to ask what they all were... when I woke up back in the ward an hour later. And whatever was in them, I want more - I felt great! I was ready to leap tall buildings with a single bound! My son had, as instructed, come in to help someone who ‘may still be drugged and need assistance’. Well, the only assistance I needed was being persuaded we should take the bus to the pub rather than simply fly there... And then for a large Chinese takeaway - wonderful.
The results? Nothing there either. So, two weeks later, it was back to the consultant. As he summarised the negative results, I thought to point out that no one had checked my prostate. There was silence for a few moments.
“Oh. Didn’t we do that?”
“Er, no, actually.”
“Hmmm. Let’s just pop into the next room, shall we?”
Oh, look - it’s jelly time again...
Well, that turned out to be ok, too. And so finally:
“What now then, doc?”
“Hmmm. It’ll probably just go away - whatever it was.”
Aye. Well it was a few months ago...
And I’ll sit differently. I mean, you never know, eh? Still, I’m like a Ford with a brand new MOT now - good for at least another year. Everything still seems to work as the Intelligent Designer planned, and my blood seems to be good enough to sup with a little liver and fried onion, Clarise... Even my puffy feet sorted themselves out a while ago.
See? My quack probably knew what he was talking about after all...
Hmmm....
A Kid In Sunderland
The King’s Arms. My grandparents ran the pub after the war, so I spent much of my first few years down there. You can’t tell, can you...? It was down by the shipyards, so grandad used to pre-pour 40-50 pints at lunchtime and have them ready on the counter for the one-hour shipyard lunch-break, when the door would burst open and a torrent of boiler-suited caulkers, welders and rivet-catchers rushed in, gratefully grabbing the nearest glass. Thirsty work, shipbuilding...
I’m pleased the pub is still serving excellent beer, and another good pub in town, Fitzies, actually used to be my doctor’s surgery back then. Dr Kelly - he was a doctor figure from fiction - tall, handsome, square-jawed, tweed-jacketed - a sort of Sean Connery of a G.P. At least it hasn’t been bulldozed - and the beer is canny.
There were still bomb-sites all over the town centre. My local recreational ground - right opposite our house - had been kindly donated one night by a Mr Heinkel. Trams clattering and sparking their way over the bridge. The joys of Joseph’s Toy Shop - our mini-Hamleys. Standing outside ‘The Picture House’ cinema, next to ‘Notrianni’s Ice Cream Parlour’, and asking adults ‘Take us in, Mister?’, because the Western film was classified. Putting a penny in the machine at the North End of the station that stamped your name on a metal strip - and then getting home, looking at the strip and thinking ‘er... why did I do that, exactly?’ But you did.
The magic of helping my mum blackberry-picking up Tunstall Hill - tossing our liberated fruit into my haversack. Every kid at school had either a khaki haversack or an air force blue one - mine was the only purple one.
And Roker Park. As a young kid my aunt lived nearby and my cousin and I would sometimes have a competition to guess the correct score by counting the roars we heard from the ground. I wasn’t that interested until my teens, but I remember being impressed by the huge crowds crossing the bridge - one river below, and another one above. That wonderful noise - a clunk and a fizz - as they turned on the flood-lights for a night game. King Charlie (Charlie Hurley) was my early hero - a colossus of a centre half, far more than just a mere mortal. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him much later. He wasn’t 7-foot tall any more - he must have shrunk, somehow.
Ah - footy. What do they say? You can change your job, you can change your wife, but you can never change your club.
Why do we do it?
Wise men have said
I’ve nee bloody idea, but -
I’m Sun’land ‘til I’m dead.
Memories of Roker
Lord Rowell, Todd and Gabbers
The Roker Roar went on and on
I was bloody hoarse for hours.
Beers in The Kings Arms
More bevvies up at Fitzies
Let’s gan across the bridge, man
And have a few quick whiskies.
We’re gannin up! We’re gannin down!
Every fan across the land
Is thinking just the same as me -
‘It’s the hope that I can’t stand’ !
I’m pleased the pub is still serving excellent beer, and another good pub in town, Fitzies, actually used to be my doctor’s surgery back then. Dr Kelly - he was a doctor figure from fiction - tall, handsome, square-jawed, tweed-jacketed - a sort of Sean Connery of a G.P. At least it hasn’t been bulldozed - and the beer is canny.
There were still bomb-sites all over the town centre. My local recreational ground - right opposite our house - had been kindly donated one night by a Mr Heinkel. Trams clattering and sparking their way over the bridge. The joys of Joseph’s Toy Shop - our mini-Hamleys. Standing outside ‘The Picture House’ cinema, next to ‘Notrianni’s Ice Cream Parlour’, and asking adults ‘Take us in, Mister?’, because the Western film was classified. Putting a penny in the machine at the North End of the station that stamped your name on a metal strip - and then getting home, looking at the strip and thinking ‘er... why did I do that, exactly?’ But you did.
The magic of helping my mum blackberry-picking up Tunstall Hill - tossing our liberated fruit into my haversack. Every kid at school had either a khaki haversack or an air force blue one - mine was the only purple one.
And Roker Park. As a young kid my aunt lived nearby and my cousin and I would sometimes have a competition to guess the correct score by counting the roars we heard from the ground. I wasn’t that interested until my teens, but I remember being impressed by the huge crowds crossing the bridge - one river below, and another one above. That wonderful noise - a clunk and a fizz - as they turned on the flood-lights for a night game. King Charlie (Charlie Hurley) was my early hero - a colossus of a centre half, far more than just a mere mortal. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him much later. He wasn’t 7-foot tall any more - he must have shrunk, somehow.
Ah - footy. What do they say? You can change your job, you can change your wife, but you can never change your club.
Why do we do it?
Wise men have said
I’ve nee bloody idea, but -
I’m Sun’land ‘til I’m dead.
Memories of Roker
Lord Rowell, Todd and Gabbers
The Roker Roar went on and on
I was bloody hoarse for hours.
Beers in The Kings Arms
More bevvies up at Fitzies
Let’s gan across the bridge, man
And have a few quick whiskies.
We’re gannin up! We’re gannin down!
Every fan across the land
Is thinking just the same as me -
‘It’s the hope that I can’t stand’ !
Thursday, 8 September 2011
Two wee poems
Did I dream it?
It couldn’t have been me
I was at home in bed with the flow
I never saw anything
The sun in my eyes it was so slow
I knew nothing about it
I’m young and I just didn’t glow
Sir, realism is to blame -
That Ernst now, he would know.
A Dent in Guildford
I once met a girl known as Trillion
A chance that was one in a million
Impossible reduced to improbable
At a Guildford party just horrible
Near a park with a pond with a lily on.
I was at home in bed with the flow
I never saw anything
The sun in my eyes it was so slow
I knew nothing about it
I’m young and I just didn’t glow
Sir, realism is to blame -
That Ernst now, he would know.
A Dent in Guildford
I once met a girl known as Trillion
A chance that was one in a million
Impossible reduced to improbable
At a Guildford party just horrible
Near a park with a pond with a lily on.
A Fine Day For Amnesia
It was while rubbing E45 into my shins and contemplating logical positivism that it came to me. Well, what actually came to me was that I didn’t understand logical positivism. Mind you, I was still scratching my shins too. Still, being cricket scorer gives you ample time for philosophy - and scratching.
Geordie Duncan, professional gardener and amateur psychotic, was the fast bowler for Wallsend Amnesia FC against Billingham Sinfonia FC in the local football league’s annual summer cricket and sandwich and cake-making tournament. And he didn’t like symphonies - 'however they are spelt!' - or toffs, or cucumber sandwiches.
“Well played, sir!” said the Sinfonia captain from the boundary, waving a half-eaten cucumber sandwich.
“Me pease pudding and ham sarnies are going well.” said Granny Smith proudly from the Amnesia table in the food tent.
Herbert Mangle, Wallsend poet and hypothetical vegetarian, was philosophically debating internally if he, as a hypothetical vegetarian, was really eating his third pease pudding and ham sandwich, or whether this was a sensory deception brought on by a hypothetical protein deficiency, but he was definitely sure (as he had been in love fourteen and a half times before), that he was now in love with Vera Arbuthnot, daughter of Sinfonia 's benefactor, Sir Horatio Arbuthnot, as she demurely handed out smoked salmon canapés at the Sinfonia table. And anyway, as he opined to Chas Hunkers, family butcher and declamatory pessimist: “As Shaw remarked,‘Virtue is insufficient temptation’ “.
Out on the green, Geordie Duncan was striding stiffly back to his mark, eyes bulging and knuckles cracking, as the ball was retrieved, post-six, from the long grass, while the stripey-capped Sinfonia batsmen met in the middle with a toothy laugh and a ‘yahhh!’.
“I’ve always said...” said Chas Hunkers (and he always had) “...that England will perish overnight if Brussels ever bans the British banger...”
“Has anyone seen me hearing aid?” Asked Granny Smith.
“Eh?” She added, somewhat superfluously.
Herbert Mangle had written an ode to the fragrant Vera Arbuthnot on a serviette, and slipped it to her while pretending to admire her Battenburgs:
O gorgeous Vera, my heart is slain
Geordie Duncan, professional gardener and amateur psychotic, was the fast bowler for Wallsend Amnesia FC against Billingham Sinfonia FC in the local football league’s annual summer cricket and sandwich and cake-making tournament. And he didn’t like symphonies - 'however they are spelt!' - or toffs, or cucumber sandwiches.
“Well played, sir!” said the Sinfonia captain from the boundary, waving a half-eaten cucumber sandwich.
“Me pease pudding and ham sarnies are going well.” said Granny Smith proudly from the Amnesia table in the food tent.
Herbert Mangle, Wallsend poet and hypothetical vegetarian, was philosophically debating internally if he, as a hypothetical vegetarian, was really eating his third pease pudding and ham sandwich, or whether this was a sensory deception brought on by a hypothetical protein deficiency, but he was definitely sure (as he had been in love fourteen and a half times before), that he was now in love with Vera Arbuthnot, daughter of Sinfonia 's benefactor, Sir Horatio Arbuthnot, as she demurely handed out smoked salmon canapés at the Sinfonia table. And anyway, as he opined to Chas Hunkers, family butcher and declamatory pessimist: “As Shaw remarked,‘Virtue is insufficient temptation’ “.
Out on the green, Geordie Duncan was striding stiffly back to his mark, eyes bulging and knuckles cracking, as the ball was retrieved, post-six, from the long grass, while the stripey-capped Sinfonia batsmen met in the middle with a toothy laugh and a ‘yahhh!’.
“I’ve always said...” said Chas Hunkers (and he always had) “...that England will perish overnight if Brussels ever bans the British banger...”
“Has anyone seen me hearing aid?” Asked Granny Smith.
“Eh?” She added, somewhat superfluously.
Herbert Mangle had written an ode to the fragrant Vera Arbuthnot on a serviette, and slipped it to her while pretending to admire her Battenburgs:
O gorgeous Vera, my heart is slain
Run off with me - the world we’ll scorn
We’ll catch the ten past midnight train
And be in Whitley Bay by morn...
Geordie Duncan thundered in and unleashed a beamer that was but a blur. The Sinfonia batsman did manage to raise his bat enough to get two previously quite intact fingers to change the missile’s direction, in this case towards the elbow of a half-turned PC Jack Townsend, the insecure policeman, who was umpiring at square leg in his blue serge policeman’s trousers, as he felt these might lend him extra authority in his umpiring capacity.
“Yaaah, partner!” shouted the non-striking Sinfonian, setting off for a run.
“Arrrgh! Ohhh! Oooo!” shouted the struck Sinfonian, not running at all.
“Ow, yer b****r, ow, yer b****r...!” shouted PC Jack Townsend, running at least 13 in various directions.
“It’ll all end in tears” observed Chas Hunkers. “Mark my words. It always does.”
“Shaw observed” said Herbert Mangle, “that Hegel had observed that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.”
“It’s the Worcester sauce in the pease pudding that makes the difference”, said Granny Smith, winking.
Vera Arbuthnot clearly felt that the 'sauce' in Herbert Mangle’s serviette made no difference at all to her and made no response to his poetic overture. Herbert Mangle, after a few moment’s philosophical reflection, reacted both positively and logically, and soon another serviette found its way, this time to the palm of Vera Arbuthot’s shapely helper, Juanita St.John Fortinbras.
PC Jack Townsend felt it was his painful duty to exact swift justice, so changed into his blue policeman’s tunic, (but had to swap the blue serge trousers for his cricket whites as the material was making his leg itch badly). He then confiscated the cricket ball, deeming it a ‘dangerous weapon’, thereby terminating the match. Under the modified Duckworth-Lewis-Townsend formula, Wallsend Amnesia were thus awarded the game based on runs scored divided by the number of stripes on their caps.
Granny Smith’s pease pudding and ham sandwiches also took the prize for Amnesia in the cake and sandwich contest - being fulsomely praised by Sir Hugo Arbuthnot as ‘nonpareil’.
“Eh?” said Granny Smith.
Not only did Sir Hugo behave as a good sport - even Juanita St.John Fortinbras seemed to take Granny Smith’s triumph in good heart, as she was smiling shyly and quite rosy-cheeked as she left, folding away a serviette into her purse.
Geordie Duncan finished off the remaining pork pies, raising a half-eaten one in one massive paw and waving it cheerfully at the back of the departing ambulance.
“Well” said Herbert Mangle, commendably stoic in his swift recovery from Vera Arbuthnot’s rebuff, and carefully folding up a railway timetable and slipping it into his pocket as he also got up to leave. “All in all, I think it was rather a fine day for Amnesia.”
(Inspired by, and a few bits nicked from, the stories of Leonard Barras)
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