h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Morning Peanut

It seems to be a period of brain -adjusting to the shorter days and lengthening nights...In other words I had another wakeful period.. Fortunately (to answer your question) I went to bed happy with my letter at least..Our trip to see our son was not as happy as it should be, and but talking to him I realized that my was still too long and I reduced it by half once we were back home..

Then I watched the news and the second half of the programme about the Miracle of the Twin Towers.. All 'grist to the mill' of thoughts about escapism- and what I have called "The Versailles effect".

An important part of the thrust of my book is that cities are really happening places because they achieve a critical mass of two kinds of people (a) those with real drive, ambition and vision, and (b) those for whom life outside the city is no life at all. So City slums, ghettos,shanty towns etc are signs of the failure of life away from the city.

But the Versailles Effect was when rulers and ruling classes started to feel that Cities were just too vital and exploited their wealth and legitimate rights to distance themselves. This produced the period when the power generated by cities and harnessed by governments was able to turn England, for example, into a place that foreigners found to be just like one great garden. Wordsworth and other Romantic poets could feel free to wander these tamed landscapes "free as a cloud that floats on earth.. in the bliss of solitude".. Solitude was no longer a basis for weakness and vulnerability. Not least because of the book revolution that occurred between 1760 and c1820.

Hermits could read and write books and feel engaged..All this was in my mind when I started reading a Tolstoy short story to which the translator had given the title "Happy Ever After"- in fact I read a bit more in the middle of the night.

The first person narrator is a 17 year old Russian girl, whose mother has recently died, leaving her alone in a big house in the wilds of Russia with a kind of governess and younger sister. And she is bored, listless seeing no point being alive.. Until their guardian comes to visit, and old friend of her father , though only 36 years old. Suddenly there was life and light in the house. With the Russian winter setting in, and various business affairs to deal with, he will not return for six months, but he urges her to think of educating herself and really working on her piano.

Now she knows the "bliss of solitude" and she regularly slips out of the house at night or early morning to appreciate the beauty of the family park.. And she is delighted when the guardian does return.. though a little nonplussed at just what to say when her governess tells the guardian that he should marry. At which he says that they are too old for marriage, and asks the girl to agree with him that it would be ridiculous for example if he at 36 married her at 17..

More or less as far as I have got.. But obvious shades of Jane Austen especially Emma.

It is a reminder of just how much time females of that class especially had for the reading of books, and how any would be author looking for a market would be well-advised to pander to the dream of a "Happy Ever After" situation (a dream that still haunted my spinster sister at 70!)

But in addition to the "light and life" material the Bliss of Solitude was also supported by "dark and death".. The era of Jane Austen was also the era of the Gothic Horror story.. Was 'Northanger Abbey' Austen too? But the greatest was Mary Shelley's "Dr. Frankenstein".

This culture of Gothic Horror was harnessed by the Wilberforce campaign against the Slave Trade ,which, as historians have agreed, pioneered one of the great forces of modern life-- the deliberate arousal and manipulation of "Moral Indignation" that 'such things should be tolerated' and allowed to exist.. As in that case it became a great excuse for the emerging middle class, using its ownership of wealth and knowledge to become the dominant section of "Western Society", to feel a "we know best" attitude about the affairs of "people in far off lands of whom we know nothing" in the "connaitre" rather than the "savoir" sense of knowing- i.e. being really familiar with.

Both extemes were taken up by the press and by politicians, and more recently by the mass media, for the "Divide and Rule" implications are obvious. Give people bits of feel-good input that makes them think that it is good to be shut away and comfortable within the confines of their homes. And reconcile them to this with visions of just how bad things are out their [Monk!]and just how much they need and depend upon States and governments to take care of them -for a fee, naturally, roughly 40% of everything.

This is why the London Games have been so incredible, and dangerous for tradional politics, because large crowds- 80,000 each day in the main stadium have come together in a spirit of goodwill- life and light- and have felt that critical mass of capability.

You may have seen the interview with one US (?) family, parents and two children who told more or less a Pied Piper tale. They had heard of the Torch relay arriving at the Lizard, and came over to follow the Torch, which they did all the way. Then they watched the Olympics. Then they discovered there was another Torch relay. They followed that too, and then watched the Paralympics. Asked when they were going to go home, they replied that they had loved being in these crowds so much that perhaps they would not "go home" at all.

Better get on.

Have a good day.



Cass

Further to my last

I recall a holiday with Mrs Cass (as now is) in 1966 when we trecked from the nearest Youth Hostel up unto Dartmoor, and I filled my ears with deafening silence- not a bird or insect sound as far as the Horizon.

There is nothing "natural" about the idea that "Peace and Quiet" go together..

Many years ago we had a French Assistant from Niger who complained that he could not sleep in our Inner City..

"Too much noise"- I asked
"No. Too much quiet. In Niger the night is alive with insects singing"- and of course they sing as long as it is safe to sing.

The great Boxing Day Tsunami caused no casualties on a little and very primitive island not too far from Sri Lanka (?).. Nature goes very quiet often even before any tremor is detected by human senses, and, as they explained to those who flew in by helicopter prepared to save them, their ancestors taught that the Sea and the Land are constantly struggling. So when they saw the sea retreating back miles, they knew that it would then counter-attack, and they had all retreated to the Hills.

It is a pity that so many people in "modern" Thailland had come to think that the power of the modern world to say "Be quiet"- does not necessarily result in establishing "peace".. Old teaching experience..Chinese wisdom over Harmony.. etc.

Cass

Hello Cass,

My thought process are disjointed today but I am going to pick up on a snippet of your post

You say 'this is why the London Games have been so incredible, and dangerous for tradional politics, because large crowds- 80,000 each day in the main stadium have come together in a spirit of goodwill- life and light- and have felt that critical mass of capability.'

I agree with you about it being incredible, the atmosphere, the coming together, the goodwill and a host of other good things that have come out Olympics

I disagree that it is any way dangerous to traditional politics. The combination of the Jubliee and the Olympics if anything have either reinforced or been advantageous to the ruling elite

I applaud the goodwill, the coming together, the volunteering but I feel sickened that this is being and will be used to promote 'we are all in this togther' shit and their idealogy behind their ideas of 'Big Society' in the face of Austerity

ho hum, that took quite a long time to write, I don't like to be so slow



Peanut

I meant to add endeavour and spirit in there,

I applaud the goodwill, the atmosphere, the coming togther, the 'spirit of the games' and the endeavour...

Morning Peanut

But "traditional politics" from the late Nineteenth Century adapted to the need of the Middle Classes to harness the power of the State, and, in particular after 1945, to use the idea of a "United Nations" in order to create a more stable and controlled world order that they would be able to control between them.. because, by then, ordinary people were by and large prepared to "sell their soul" for the kind of stability that England had enjoyed since 1688-9.

But "winning the peace that way that we won the war" meant by using those financial means that had allowed in particular England/Britain to win wars since 1689. That is by piling it all onto the National Debt. Wars increased the ND and then in peace people paid it off- or at least brought the burden of sevicing it down to reasonable dimensions. In 1924 when Churchill became Chancellor of the Exchequer and wanted to do things to improve life for the common people and reduce unemployment, the Treasury experts told him that debt reduction must take priority, for servicing the post-1914-18 ND took up 40% of National Income.

Some Chartists suggested that if the Six Points were achieved they should just renounce the ND that working people had not voted for. But this just puts a State in a kind of Debtors prison, because a State can not meet the expectations of a democratic electorate with the current Income levels. Voters expect to enjoy a "Live now pay later" life, and the Debt Problems in the Eurozone come not from the actual levels of Debt of these countries, but from the fact that being so endebted they can only borrow the money they need to keep going on terms rather like those of the Loan Sharks that prey on people with similar problems.

You will probably have noted that Ed Ball spelled out to the TUC yesterday that there is no real alternative, except that Socialists do not believe in Society, merely propping up disadvantage and disability in a kind of "Apartheid".

Cass

PS

You ignored the significance of "critical mass".

I think that people who have not really lived in London can not really understand the relationship between Londoners and both the monarchy and the "ruling elite".. Londoners have known over the centuries that the "English Crown" is almost totally dependent upon them. Hence they are quite happy to sing "Send Her Victorious etc" and to take pride in events like the Royal Wedding last year or the Diamond Jubilee this year because it is to the glory of the English people for whom London has played a "capital role" since before 1066. It is not unlike the Father-of-the Bride syndrome in a traditional wedding. The glory of it all redounds to our credit.

Winston Churchill speaking to the British people on behalf of the Crown famously said "I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat, toil and tears". But T.B. Macaulay, another great speech-maker, said in 1842 "Everyone of sense knows that it is the people who support the Crown and not the Crown that supports the people."

As I know from my native Oxford in a small city like that, however illustrious, you do not sense being part of a critical mass that makes you feel that collectively you are masters of your own destiny.

At moments of destiny, moments when a page in history is being turned, Londoners become masters of the situation. At other moments they just "get on with it" and "work it out", expecting nothing really good but more demands from the Government.

But Churchill said: "Hitler knows he must break us in this island or lose the war"' and Londoners made sure that, under London leadership and inspiration, neither London nor Britain gave way.

Churchill said to the Crowds in London on VE Day. "This is your victory". And what I have seen of all of the political establishment,even those with the task of ensuring that the tools and equipment were ready for the Games, is that they are humbled by the fact that "The Many" said "Give us the tools and we will finish the job", which required, and produced, "Finest Hours".

The site with all its facilities, but no longer peopled, looks dead. It just shows that it was the critical mass of human beings that brought light and life to this stage.

Cass

Morning Cass



Nippy morning here but pretty.

I saw a fat hedgehog in the garden last night, well, the fat rear end of said hedgehog. He/she had found some cat biscuits near the compost bags and was snuffling enthusiastically.

I am looking forward to doing some gardening later. There are a couple of good potential hibernation patches at the back of the garden but there are a couple of jobs I need to do before I can leave it undisturbed.

What plans do you have for this weekend



Peanut

Morning Peanut

What a relief! Mrs Cass had some computer problems last night, which may be irrelevant to me finding that I had lost my h2g2 connection and was required to sign in, and I used my old BBC because I had contributed to a BBC blog yesterday. I finally found my h2g2 one, but by then I had emails from gurus with new numbers etc.. After 35 minutes I managed to get access- and then I worried that I had not ticked the 'Remember me .." box.

Our nice crisp bright weather seems to be holding on here too.. Mrs Cass announced projects to go 'Jumble-Saling' today several days ago-this being one of her hobbies. This morning she has reversed her suggested order. Logically it makes more sense to go to the Country Fair that lasts until c7pm second, and I may well go with her. Not for jumble in my case. It is in the park that was right next to the school that I taught at for 14 years and was our local park when we bought our first home, and had children. Another of my songs is called "Ghosts of Yesterday" but the Country Fair is teeming with life [sometimes too much in mid-summer- I suppose they re-scheduled this year because of the London Games]and I may well see people I know- either actually or generically.

In fact it is as Mrs Cass said a busy week-end because on Sunday we are driving out to have lunch and spend some time with our daughter and boyfriend, this being identified as the only Sunday she had free before we are next off to France in October.

Apart from that the last couple of days I moved my line of attack from the garage to the garden and allotment. On thursday I came home with an overflowing wheelbarrow, my own Harvest Home" which resulted in lots of work washing and storing away, and making use of a mass of beetroot. Yesterday it was blackberries and in the evening hours of preparation and cooking of (a)beetroot chutney (something Mrs Cass found on the internet), and (b)cooked blackberry and apple, which we enjoy with Mrs Cass' home made Yoghurt.

Nice to read about your fat Hedghog on the Hedgehog thread..Makes me think of a Nature film I saw about Grizzly bears and hibernation. As with much of the work in the garden it is a reminder that this really is a "Cutting Back to the Root" season when life gets ready, not for the end of one year, but for the opportunity to get ready for a New one. Even Hiccup putting down roots in her new courses. The academic cycle. Now is the time for groundwork- preparing the ground and laying down the foundations for completion next summer.

Yesterdays "bad news" [that included a vicious murder 'down your way'] was a 10% fall in construction in the last months compared with last year. Well 12 months ago, like any Olympic Host construction was going full-blast in order to create all the facilities necessary to "play host" to the world.

Enjoy your day.. I believe that some rain is on the way soon.. But things are so dry that some nice rain will not be a disaster.

Cass

Hello Cass

eek, I'm glad you found your way back! The gurus are great, I have them on my contact list in email just in case I need rescueing.

Beetroot chutney sounds delicious. Have you tried beetroot and chocolate cake? My sister makes a good'un.

Happy Harvet Home to you

Did you enjoy your trip down memory lane and has Mrs Cass enjoyed jumbling?

My Mum likes to go to our primary school fete, it is a good summer fayre but it also has good memories for her and she always meets people to catch up with.

Peanut

Morning Peanut

I am glad to be back.. Apart from anything else I at least value the body of work I have in my space and accessible to "anyone out there": and I enjoy our exchanges.

I also thought that Beetroot Chutney sounded very promising. It is a bit frustrating that you have to leave it for a month to mature.. But then part of the whole purpose is to make use of Harvest. Fresh beetroot is delicious, and this year I have taken to just grating one. We often have grated carrots as part of salads and beetroot goes just as well... As for your cake, I am not really a chocolate person most of the time. Emergency rations excepted.

Yes I did enjoy our trip down memory land a great deal, though it was curtailed by Mrs Cass putting an hour limit to rendezvous back at the car. So many memories and so many faces that I thought I recognised from decades ago, and one ex-pupil and her mother from the end of my teaching who 'I held up' for a large part of my allotted time. An interesting couple who lived just around the corner from the school, where, the daughter told me yesterday, the Mum had lived since the age of three. The daughter is still rather self-effacing and lacking in self-confidence. Someone who used to just sit quietly at the back of lessons and rather let them pass by. Until after one school exam she came to ask me why she could never get more than 50%, nor better than very mediocre marks for any of her normal work-assignments.

I suppose other girls compared notes and learned from each other. So we agreed that I would add to my marking/correction suggestions as to just how she could have done more than just the minimum. Over the next weeks her work improved steadily, and, as she reminded me yesterday, the next school exam she got 95%: and, when her peers looked at her with a "where did that come from?" attitude, I told them just how she had achieved this by "taking on board" (I hate the expression- but it works with the times) the advice and the opportunities she had been given.

I think it was quite a seminal moment. She resolved to do A Level History, but not GCSE first. Self-knowledge. Twentieth Century History did not attract her. She preferred Medieval and Tudor, and would do the Medieval A Level taught by my colleague: and she did.

She has just finished a degree in Design at a local South London University and is going to take some courses in how to run a business etc because she wants to set up in business designing low tech and simple aids for people with mild disability.

One of the things that came up along with my theme of how the Olympics harvested the spirit of the Sixties was that we were just up the hill from the pub where I used to sing in the Seventies as one of those happy not to make "the fancy scene".

Must rush now. We are supposed to be leaving for our daughters in less than an hour.

Have a good day.

Cass

Hello Cass

I know what you mean about waiting for chutney. It is a long old wait for sloe gin.
You have reminded me that my Mums parsnip wine from last year should be ready soon

I have quite a lot of financial stuff to get through this week, a huge chore, and a little bit stressful, doesn't make for terribly interesting conversation either

just advanced warning that if I am not particulary chatty in my posts this week that is because I don't have a lot to say about myself and I am probably in a bit of a humpf

How did your lunch go and what plans do you have for the week?





Peanut

Hi Peanut

Nice to read your post-- even or especially if it is a difficult week.

Keeping in touch with people is a bit of a current theme. I had a shock at our daughters when at one moment I saw her in the kitchen while boyfriend was doing something and she looked just like my sad and lonely spinster sister who has never had a life. I may have said that the way our childrens lives changed earlier this year- one getting a car and the other buying a house with boyfriend- actually made me quite depressed. These are small steps, but not necessarily "getting a life" yet, and Mrs Cass and I are really worried about what life holds for them.

It suddenly came home to me that our daughter returns to "home alone" living most evenings, and this buying a house together is just on an "on trial" basis. So I phoned her at work this morning- boyfriend is on business in the Czech Republic this week.

But when I turned on just now I was crying my eyes out because I had just watched the last 45 minutes or so of "The Admirable Crichton". We watched it in a rare family outing back in the Fifties and a time when people could dream of a better world. It was a hit stage play during the First World War and, as a romantic comedy, really addressed the positive aspects of the destruction of Civilization that The Great War was bringing about. "Times gone by". Times of young hopes and dreams.

Back to reality, however, time to cook lunch.. It is a lovely bright day here, and I intend to make a trip to the recycling depot with lots of rubbish, coming back via the garden centre.

May catch you later.

Cass

Evening Peanut,

As for plans for the rest of the week, attacking "the mess" in the garage is really a case of just chipping away and it may take weeks, at the rate that we can progress.


I don't know whether I mentioned that a couple of days I saw an article on the BBC News site about a girl, as she was in 1939, who got shipped out of East Poland by the Soviets and had a pretty traumatic time of it during the war. She settled in London and is now c80- and the journalist noted that every windowsill in her house is covered with potted plants, while her garden is overhung with cherries, like the garden she lost in 1939. This seems to be one reaction to continental PTS: and another one is hoarding all kinds of things. Today Mrs Cass found some of the things that I was going to take to Emmaus and refused to consider letting them go. Things that were given to us by people who had no use/need of them, and neither have we-- but "just in case".

It is true that I store wood and materials that I might be able to use, and I have just put aside some large bits to knock together something to house our recycling boxes tidily with a top that we can use to put some of Mrs Cass' outside pot-plants.

Nice phone call from our daughter this evening. She visited a really lovely house- to her taste and vision at 6pm. Just the thought brought her almost to tears describing it to us. She has seen so many. One last night. She said that the agent looked shocked when she just said "No" after ten minutes. She can be so sweet and "young for her age"- always has been, and people have often made the mistake of underestimating her clarity of thought and decisiveness. After what I wrote earlier it was nice to see her imagining using this house as the home for her future family. But will it fit boyfriend?

Nite

Cass

Morning Cass

I hope the house is the home for the both of them.

I have never brought a house, and unless the premium bonds that my Grandma brought me come up trumps I don't think that it will happen in my lifetime

I was involved in the process of choosing this house though and had that feeling within minutes 'this is the one' and could visualise us living in it.

It was quite trashed and 'in need of modernisation' as they say, still does need some modernisation, the bathroom and the kitchen but so long as they are functional can't say it bothers me.

It has been a good home for us

Peanut

you have got your smilies back

Hi Peanut

Hope the financial "stuff" is going OK..

I am having a quick break from trying finalise the letter to my sister that has been so difficult to write...Perhaps even worse than financial stuff.

Re Smilies- I have taken to a precautionary "Select all" and "Copy" when I have written a larger post.. Perhaps it takes too long to write, for I sometimes lose them. And if I am doing that I can change skins from this one to another one where I can add Smilies.

Have a good day.

May write later.

Cass

While lunch is cooking...

What you said about your house being in need of modernisation made me think of our chat with our daughter last night which echoed something I said many years ago when considering my third change of school. The "perfect" school would be an imperfect one where I could hope to be part of the process of improving it, hoping too to find myself part of a team working in common cause.

So our daughter described the house as "not perfect", which was "a good thing" because she has her own ideas..

Mind you its imperfections appear to be minimal. The owner-occupier is a professional builder who was building on this plot for someone else, who pulled out when they had done the groundwork about 19 years ago. So they designed and built their dream family home, where they have brought up their 2-3 daughters, who are now moving out/on.

Having built so many other houses in the last 19 years, they have time, energy and ideas to build a new dream house on a plot that they have seen. All sounds pretty amazing- but I will not depress you in your "Finance Week" with the asking price. Way above our range. Among other worries we have to be concerned that our childrens lives are split between Disraelies Two Nations, though they have a love of art in common, thank goodness.

Cass

Hi Cass

I think that a pitch on a campsite might be stretching our finances tonight

Just so you know I appreciate the smilies, especially when I need cheering up



Peanut

Oh Dear Peanut

Bad sign..you being on line this late. Not quite the "Midnight Oil"..Sleep on it.

Nite. Nite. I must "go and do likewise"

Cass

Morning Cass

I had an afternoon nap yesterday and overslept so it was a bit difficult getting off to sleep last night

Good news today I have been to the cashpoint and a payment has been made,enough to keep us comfortably going for week so that is the immediate pressure off. I think by then my child tax credits will catch up with me.

We are skimming through, so far without getting into any debt, so there is a positive in that things are being back dated, which if you squint you could regard as a form of saving. So that is Hiccup's winter coat sorted and her bithday is coming soon enough

Peanut