Okay, back to a bit of blogging every day. There’s an interview with me over here at Worlds in Ink where I ramble on about The Departure and where you’ll find the blurb for Zero Point. I also make some comments about ebooks, but nothing ground-breaking because I’m still undecided about the various issues that arise from piracy and DRM. I would like to believe that without DRM piracy would act as publicity and result in more sales for me, but I’m afraid I have a low opinion of human nature. Then again, this morning I got paid $40 by a reader who emailed me earlier in the week with this:
I need to send you some money, I "ahem" got your books at the library, and they are all fucking brilliant.
…so perhaps I shouldn’t be such a cynic?
***
What else? Oh yeah, we’ve had two democratically elected leaders ousted and replaced by ‘technocrats’. We now we have the BMA pushing the government to ban smoking in cars and doubtless the government will bow to this then to the later total ban on smoking i.e. your car will not be your own and later your house won’t be. Another one is the idea that unless you opt out your organs will automatically go for donation, so your body belongs to the government too. How long before you are legally obliged to keep that government property in top-notch condition? All of these are putting more power into the hands of the state, taking away our freedoms, and examples of how we move ever closer to the world of The Departure. As for the BMA, I think Underdogs Bite Upwards covers that organization in a recent post:
What is the point of going through medical school if you end up being less reliable in your diagnoses and advice than a rune-casting Druid? Alcohol units recommendations are made-up numbers. Five-a-day is a made-up number. Second hand smoke is entirely lies and third-hand smoke is beyond derisory from a profession that calls homeopathy bunkum. There is no science behind any of it. It is personal prejudice based on spite and malice and what is now called 'science' and the utter morons who now make up our government accept it all. The exclusion and demonization of huge tracts of the population is justified on the basis of... nothing.
***
I’m currently working through the Peter Lavery edits of Zero Point and finding that he hasn’t been quite so demonic in his application of his ‘scary pencil’. He tells me that this is because it doesn’t require so much editing, so hopefully this means I have learnt something from him over the last ten years.
Right, an hour of learning Greek now, then shopping, then back to work.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Neal Asher Video Clip 13/11/11
Here I am again fumbling and bumbling through the questions. If you have questions for me to answer on my next video clip put them in the comments below. Also, try to make your questions concise. If you want to comment about something leading up to a question or inclusive of one, please separate out the questions at the end. Cheers!
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Well Spotted
Jin Liqun, chairman of the board of supervisors of China Investment Corp., slammed the welfare systems of European countries and said the continent must address its own problems to attract outside investment.
“If you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of the worn out welfare society,” Jin told Al-Jazeera television in an interview broadcast at the weekend.
“The labor laws induce sloth, indolence, rather than hardworking.”
Spot on, but we'll be a long time waiting for any such sanity from our 'leaders'.
Incidentally, two elected leaders have been chucked out and replaced by Europhile shills (I will not call them 'technocrats' because the word implies a pragmatism that just doesn't exist in the EU elite). How long do you reckon before they'll start calling them 'delegates' ... and how long before they start suggesting ID implants as a practical solution to border control?
“If you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of the worn out welfare society,” Jin told Al-Jazeera television in an interview broadcast at the weekend.
“The labor laws induce sloth, indolence, rather than hardworking.”
Spot on, but we'll be a long time waiting for any such sanity from our 'leaders'.
Incidentally, two elected leaders have been chucked out and replaced by Europhile shills (I will not call them 'technocrats' because the word implies a pragmatism that just doesn't exist in the EU elite). How long do you reckon before they'll start calling them 'delegates' ... and how long before they start suggesting ID implants as a practical solution to border control?
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Waterstones, Chelmsford
We popped into Chelmsford yesterday, mainly so Caroline could renew her driving licence (nearest post office with the facility to take her photo too) and, as is usual before these trips, I first printed up some of my bookmarks. I then went to Waterstones and offered to sign my books there. They were fine with that as usual and I went through about the 10 - 15 copies on the shelf. Meanwhile I was passing a greedy eye over a big fat Vernor Vinge tome, but on closer inspection discovered it to be a repackaging of Fire Upon the Deep & Deepness in the Sky, so gave it a miss. However, while browsing I did see some stuff I wanted to try. In the end I left Waterstones with the lot below:
Update:
Nope, I screwed up. The Vernor Vinge one isn't a repackaging - I must have misread on the quick glance inside I had. I'll be buying a copy shortly.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Get those Tobacco Seeds in.
The future of The Departure is closer than you think. Take for example this little wheeze (excuse the pun) suggested by Simon Chapman in that hotbed of totalitarianism, Australia. Now, maybe you don't agree with smoking, but remember that where the anti-smokers lead the anti-alcohol, fat, sugar (name your poison) brigade follow:
Under the proposal, a license would give the smoker a right to a limited quota of tobacco supply, say 10 cigarettes a day or 20 cigarettes a day and so on. There is a fee payable to government to give the consumer the right to use tobacco. The more tobacco the license holder pre‑commits to smoke, the higher the license fee involved.
Under the licensing plan consumers would be asked to pass a test, 'not dissimilar to a driving test' Chapman stated, to qualify for a right to receive a license to legally purchase tobacco.
Based on the questionable notion that smokers lack an awareness of at least three decades of heavily publicised research about health problems that smoking causes, the government would see itself fit to decide for the smoker the amount of cigarettes he or she is allowed to smoke.
Read this guys additional comments below as well. Coming your way soon: a licence to fart.
Under the proposal, a license would give the smoker a right to a limited quota of tobacco supply, say 10 cigarettes a day or 20 cigarettes a day and so on. There is a fee payable to government to give the consumer the right to use tobacco. The more tobacco the license holder pre‑commits to smoke, the higher the license fee involved.
Under the licensing plan consumers would be asked to pass a test, 'not dissimilar to a driving test' Chapman stated, to qualify for a right to receive a license to legally purchase tobacco.
Based on the questionable notion that smokers lack an awareness of at least three decades of heavily publicised research about health problems that smoking causes, the government would see itself fit to decide for the smoker the amount of cigarettes he or she is allowed to smoke.
Read this guys additional comments below as well. Coming your way soon: a licence to fart.
Last Kazani
Here's a few pictures from the last kazani of the year we went to, a couple of days before heading back here. There's some blurring in them, but there's probably a good reason for that:
Linear no Threshold Hypothesis
From a Sierra Club insider:
With junk science, it is easy to scare people. There are many things that are bad for us that are present at low levels in the environment -- for example, mercury, lead, radiation, or tobacco smoke. The junk science approach to trace toxins is to claim that if a high level of the bad thing would cause X people to get sick, then a level 10,000 times smaller must cause 1/10,000 as many people to get sick. Given 300 million people in the country, this math can give you thousands of people getting sick from low levels of mercury, lead, radiation, or secondhand tobacco smoke. This approach is known as the linear no threshold hypothesis.
So considering this approach, don't you think this toxic substance should be banned or controlled?
With junk science, it is easy to scare people. There are many things that are bad for us that are present at low levels in the environment -- for example, mercury, lead, radiation, or tobacco smoke. The junk science approach to trace toxins is to claim that if a high level of the bad thing would cause X people to get sick, then a level 10,000 times smaller must cause 1/10,000 as many people to get sick. Given 300 million people in the country, this math can give you thousands of people getting sick from low levels of mercury, lead, radiation, or secondhand tobacco smoke. This approach is known as the linear no threshold hypothesis.
So considering this approach, don't you think this toxic substance should be banned or controlled?
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Gotta love Fusion
This looks promising (check comments).
They are over halfway through this funded (about $8 million) project. This part is just one step towards commercial fusion and if successful could justify a $200 million follow up to develop a full commercial scale system.
As one commenter notes:
In earlier statements it was explained that WB-8 was only going to be produced if WB7/7.1 were successful -- i.e. validated WB-6 results. I think we can assume that happened. WB-8 is to determine scaling. This means a lot of testing to provide a lot of conclusive data for peer review. The fact that the research is ongoing, means they've hit no serious snags - the contract would end if they did. This is a very very positive report, do not listen to the naysayers.
As one commenter notes:
In earlier statements it was explained that WB-8 was only going to be produced if WB7/7.1 were successful -- i.e. validated WB-6 results. I think we can assume that happened. WB-8 is to determine scaling. This means a lot of testing to provide a lot of conclusive data for peer review. The fact that the research is ongoing, means they've hit no serious snags - the contract would end if they did. This is a very very positive report, do not listen to the naysayers.
We Ain't Looking Hard Enough!
Here's a little bit over at The Register related to the Fermi Paradox:
The problem, according to boffins Jacob Haqq-Misra and Ravi Kumar Kopparapu of Penn State uni, is that it's entirely possible that our Solar System is littered with ancient alien space probes and we simply haven't found them yet. Haqq-Misra and Kopparapu have investigated this mathematically.
Of course it might also be the case that we have no idea what they might look like. Maybe they wrap them up in a big black rock the size of an aircraft carrier...
The problem, according to boffins Jacob Haqq-Misra and Ravi Kumar Kopparapu of Penn State uni, is that it's entirely possible that our Solar System is littered with ancient alien space probes and we simply haven't found them yet. Haqq-Misra and Kopparapu have investigated this mathematically.
Of course it might also be the case that we have no idea what they might look like. Maybe they wrap them up in a big black rock the size of an aircraft carrier...
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Too Close for Comfort
Bloody hell. I caught this out of the corner of my eye on a recent news report but didn't follow up on it. So, from The Register:
A vast, inky black sphere approximately the size of a nuclear aircraft carrier is plunging through the void of space towards planet Earth, though NASA rather panickily insists that it will definitely not smash into our planet with devastating force.
"The asteroid safely will safely fly past our planet slightly closer than the moon's orbit on Nov 8", says a NASA statement issued yesterday (our emphasis), perhaps indicating a certain level of flap at the space agency's press office.
Now excuse me 'slightly closer than the moon's orbit'! In astronomical terms that's what called too fucking close for comfort. No wonder there's a bit of buttock clenching going on, and that'll increase if someone's calculations are a bit off. Of course, if this 'blacker than charcoal object' were to slightly alter its course and fall into orbit around Earth I suspect there'll be a bit of pants filling too.
A vast, inky black sphere approximately the size of a nuclear aircraft carrier is plunging through the void of space towards planet Earth, though NASA rather panickily insists that it will definitely not smash into our planet with devastating force.
"The asteroid safely will safely fly past our planet slightly closer than the moon's orbit on Nov 8", says a NASA statement issued yesterday (our emphasis), perhaps indicating a certain level of flap at the space agency's press office.
Now excuse me 'slightly closer than the moon's orbit'! In astronomical terms that's what called too fucking close for comfort. No wonder there's a bit of buttock clenching going on, and that'll increase if someone's calculations are a bit off. Of course, if this 'blacker than charcoal object' were to slightly alter its course and fall into orbit around Earth I suspect there'll be a bit of pants filling too.
For Frack's Sake
On (I think) April 2nd last year this happened:
While we sat in the sunshine sipping cold beers the earth shrugged, grumbled then continued shaking. Some people ran out into the street – one Greek woman all hysterical and crossing herself and doubtless praying to the god who chucks tsunamis about. We remained seated, since we weren’t anywhere anything was going to fall on us, and watched the street lamps whipping about like reeds and nearby trees thrashing. I’ve experienced quakes here before but never seen that.
As far as I recollect this was an earthquake of 6.3 on the Richter scale. On April 1st and May 27th fracking in Lancashire caused, respectively quakes of 2.3 and 1.4, and immediately the media and green hairshirts were shouting for a moratorium on this country accessing an energy supply that might just drag us out of the pit (in fact, do a search of 'fracking' and you get pages and pages of hysteria).
Here is the simplest explanation of the Richter Scale:
A logarithmic scale used to express the total amount of energy released by an earthquake. Its values typically fall between 0 and 9, with each increase of 1 representing a 10-fold increase in energy.
So, the earthquake I experienced in Crete was roughly 10,000 times stronger than the strongest one caused by fracking. In fact, as you can see from the graph the lowest one is in the region of ‘not felt’ and the highest one is ‘minor’.
Now go read Counting Cats and the comments. This one I find particularly illuminating;
A butterfly flapping its wings in Mexico will cause small seismic tremors in Lancashire. Even the lefty dolts at wikipedia know that earthquakes under 2.0 occur “continuously” and those of 2.0-2.9 are ‘Generally not felt, but recorded.’ with 1.3 million of them per year.
Let’s do some maths. A 2.0 quake has 63 MJ of energy, a 2.5 one has 360 MJ. Gasoline contains about 35 MJ/L. Every time some lefty jerk drives to a demo and burns 2 litres of gas he releases as much energy as a 2.0 quake. For a 2.5 quake the dolt has to drive for a couple of hours. Big deal.
Devil's Kitchen also has something to say...
Update
Here's a link to an interesting report passed onto me. If this sort of stuff is of interest to you then read it carefully and consider the words 'correlation is not causation', or even, 'which came first the chicken or the egg?' Remember too that one of the big criticisms of the alarmist film 'Gaslands' was that people had methane in their water supply before any fracking.
While we sat in the sunshine sipping cold beers the earth shrugged, grumbled then continued shaking. Some people ran out into the street – one Greek woman all hysterical and crossing herself and doubtless praying to the god who chucks tsunamis about. We remained seated, since we weren’t anywhere anything was going to fall on us, and watched the street lamps whipping about like reeds and nearby trees thrashing. I’ve experienced quakes here before but never seen that.
As far as I recollect this was an earthquake of 6.3 on the Richter scale. On April 1st and May 27th fracking in Lancashire caused, respectively quakes of 2.3 and 1.4, and immediately the media and green hairshirts were shouting for a moratorium on this country accessing an energy supply that might just drag us out of the pit (in fact, do a search of 'fracking' and you get pages and pages of hysteria).
A logarithmic scale used to express the total amount of energy released by an earthquake. Its values typically fall between 0 and 9, with each increase of 1 representing a 10-fold increase in energy.
So, the earthquake I experienced in Crete was roughly 10,000 times stronger than the strongest one caused by fracking. In fact, as you can see from the graph the lowest one is in the region of ‘not felt’ and the highest one is ‘minor’.
Now go read Counting Cats and the comments. This one I find particularly illuminating;
A butterfly flapping its wings in Mexico will cause small seismic tremors in Lancashire. Even the lefty dolts at wikipedia know that earthquakes under 2.0 occur “continuously” and those of 2.0-2.9 are ‘Generally not felt, but recorded.’ with 1.3 million of them per year.
Let’s do some maths. A 2.0 quake has 63 MJ of energy, a 2.5 one has 360 MJ. Gasoline contains about 35 MJ/L. Every time some lefty jerk drives to a demo and burns 2 litres of gas he releases as much energy as a 2.0 quake. For a 2.5 quake the dolt has to drive for a couple of hours. Big deal.
Devil's Kitchen also has something to say...
Update
Here's a link to an interesting report passed onto me. If this sort of stuff is of interest to you then read it carefully and consider the words 'correlation is not causation', or even, 'which came first the chicken or the egg?' Remember too that one of the big criticisms of the alarmist film 'Gaslands' was that people had methane in their water supply before any fracking.
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Resolutions
A lot of people tend to make New Year resolutions but for me it’s becoming the ‘back from Crete’ resolution. After my initial greedy splurge on the Internet, reading sometimes as much as seven months’ worth of various blogs, and discovering as always ‘same old shit; different month’, I resolve not to spend quite so much time on it. However, that’s just the same as my, ‘I’m never drinking again!’ after a particularly bad hangover.
Resolutions I will stick to are these: I will continue with my twenty sit-ups and twenty press-ups every morning, I’ll cycle during from Monday to Friday as much as weather permits, and I’ll do two weight-training sessions a week. Another thing I resolve to do, because I was lazy this summer in this respect, is spend one hour a day learning Greek. I want to return there (unless of course it becomes dangerous to do so) with at least every single phrase from my Rough Guide imbedded in my mind. Starting Monday I’ll get my head down with Jupiter War, finishing working backwards through it, and writing the rest of the chapter starts and inserting all of them. After that I need to write blurbs for Zero Point, and perhaps a synopsis, then it’s either time for some short stories or work on Penny Royal.
Another thing I’ll have a pop at will be more of those video clips I did last year, with you providing the questions and me either answering or muttering my way out of trouble. To that end please start asking your questions in the comments section here. Try to be precise and try to bear in mind stuff already known, like, yes I am returning to the Polity – I said so in the paragraph above.
Resolutions I will stick to are these: I will continue with my twenty sit-ups and twenty press-ups every morning, I’ll cycle during from Monday to Friday as much as weather permits, and I’ll do two weight-training sessions a week. Another thing I resolve to do, because I was lazy this summer in this respect, is spend one hour a day learning Greek. I want to return there (unless of course it becomes dangerous to do so) with at least every single phrase from my Rough Guide imbedded in my mind. Starting Monday I’ll get my head down with Jupiter War, finishing working backwards through it, and writing the rest of the chapter starts and inserting all of them. After that I need to write blurbs for Zero Point, and perhaps a synopsis, then it’s either time for some short stories or work on Penny Royal.
Another thing I’ll have a pop at will be more of those video clips I did last year, with you providing the questions and me either answering or muttering my way out of trouble. To that end please start asking your questions in the comments section here. Try to be precise and try to bear in mind stuff already known, like, yes I am returning to the Polity – I said so in the paragraph above.
Friday, November 04, 2011
Asda
So, first shopping trip here and, really, I haven't noticed much of an increase in the prices of what we buy since last year, except that the £4 jeans are now £5. Certainly most of the stuff is still cheaper than it costs on Crete. Caroline did pause on the way out to buy sparklers and was told she could buy them but couldn't take them back into the shop, which was silly. She also noted Old Holborn at above £14 for 50g and Super Kings at £6.98 for a pack of 20, but the first we never buy here and the second we don't buy at all. Bloody daylight robbery and, of course, loads more business for the smugglers.
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Greek Odyssey
I just watched the episode of this program with Joanna Lumley and had to laugh. Bob Lock jokingly commented that he was disappointed not to see me at the raki-making session she attended. The raki kazani shown is about ten to fifteen minutes by car away from our house. And for those Makrigialos residents reading this, Joanna Lumley ended up dancing with someone who looked suspiciously like Fanis.
Back in Blighty
I’m back in England (that place where No Smoking signs actually breed) where it is actually a bit warmer than in the mountains on Crete. However, as I noted to Caroline recently, when the temperature here is, say, 18 in the shade it’s probably only a few degrees above that in direct sunlight, if there is any. On Crete for an equivalent temperature in the shade the direct sunlight temperature can be 30 or above.
First job upon getting back here was sorting through the mail. Damn but I wish all our junk mail could be diverted to Crete. It would keep the house there warm for days. Next was food, and how wonderful it was, upon our return home and not having had much to eat, to phone the local Chinese and order a meal for two – delivered to our door just half an hour later (and scoffed at great speed). After that I had to retune the TVs because of the digital changeover, and my goodness isn’t there a lot to watch (an expected reaction after a diet of BBC World, Greek TV and DVDs). And now, of course, I have constant Internet.
I give it just a few days before I start shouting at the TV, a month before I decide I really need to stop eating so much, and a few months before I get disgusted at the amount of time I’m wasting on the Internet.
First job upon getting back here was sorting through the mail. Damn but I wish all our junk mail could be diverted to Crete. It would keep the house there warm for days. Next was food, and how wonderful it was, upon our return home and not having had much to eat, to phone the local Chinese and order a meal for two – delivered to our door just half an hour later (and scoffed at great speed). After that I had to retune the TVs because of the digital changeover, and my goodness isn’t there a lot to watch (an expected reaction after a diet of BBC World, Greek TV and DVDs). And now, of course, I have constant Internet.
I give it just a few days before I start shouting at the TV, a month before I decide I really need to stop eating so much, and a few months before I get disgusted at the amount of time I’m wasting on the Internet.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Okay, One More from Crete
Wednesday 26th October
Ah, maybe we’ll be getting one more Internet session in before returning to England.
On a slightly depressing day in which I needed to escape my skull for a while I sat down and read Terry Pratchett’s ‘I Shall Wear Midnight’. With wisdom, comedy, excellent characters and a wonderful story I was taken off to Discworld for a day, and thoroughly enjoyed my trip. With all that is happening to him, and him now having to use voice-recognition to write since he can no longer use a keyboard, this guy still hasn’t lost his sense of humour. I’ve seen the words ‘national treasure’ being bandied about, in one case applied to me (which I suspect many would question), but in his case they couldn’t be more true.
I see that the politicians are again getting together to discuss how much of a voluntary ‘haircut’ on their investment in Greek bonds private investors are going to get. I’ve said this before but again this strikes me as a strange use of the word ‘voluntary’ which implies a degree of choice. In a similar way to Orwell’s newspeak this I suppose can be described as govspeak, and the translation of ‘voluntary’ is ‘bend over and drop your trousers’. In fact, the same translation applies to any phrase, used by politicians, in which are combined the words: measures, investment, development, social, environmental, infrastructure, generation, welfare, public, international, job, green, business and many more besides.
Thursday 27th October
With the population hitting 7 billion, floods and earthquakes demonstrating by death toll how overpopulated our planet is, with the numbers of the unemployed growing, governments in debt and organizations like the EU pushing for more integration and more control, I really couldn’t have chosen a better time for The Departure to be published. Then again, with what looks like an outbreaks of sanity across the planet, with the ‘Arab Spring’, the steady swing towards greater freedom in previously communist regimes, the possible collapse of the Euro and the EU – precursor to the Committee – and with austerity measures including cuts to the state, perhaps things are due to improve. Yeah, right. These are just hiccups along the way. Overall, large parasitic governments continue to accrue power over us, the surveillance society ever expands, the population shows no sign of ceasing to grow (readers of this will probably see 9 billion in their life-times) and the first ID implants can’t be much further down the road. And when the software catches up with the computing, and robotics catches up with both of them, look out for trials of the first shepherds and spiderguns.
I just love the implications in Angela Merkel’s recent statement. I’m paraphrasing here but it goes something like this, ‘[unless we sort out the dept crisis] we can’t guarantee another fifty years of peace and stability.’ What started out as a ‘common market’ is actually an attempt to completely unify and integrate Europe so its individual nations don’t end up at each other’s throats again and as most who have read up on any of this will know, the politicians lied to us right from the start. One can see the desperation of Merkel and her ilk when they haul up and dust off the spectre of the world wars to threaten us. Now if the European Union was taking as its model the USA (as it was, not as it is becoming), I would be cheering her on. However, since most of its governments are run by socialist control freaks the EU increasingly resembles a fast-track version of the Soviet Union, so I’m not cheering. Already it is about bankrupt and looks to be falling apart, and Balkanization may well follow, but then, perhaps that would be better than it actually lasting.
Oh good grief they’re putting the killers of Gaddafi on trial? The world we live in is fucking insane.
Friday 28th October
We have now completely entered the time of year when we mostly stay inside the house with the stove burning, hence more in the way of rants here and fewer pictures and stuff about Crete. I have been sorting out a few things around the house: putting strips of tile around the bottoms of some walls outside for some extra waterproofing and sealing holes here and there. I also discovered that a water-based varnish I bought from Lidl for the wood here, and which didn’t seem much good for that, is great for the stone – soaking in, hardening crumbling stone and leaving a slick waterproof layer. This stuff was under €10 for two litres, which is a lot cheaper than the petra latha (stone oil) I used before, and it goes a lot further, so I’ll be buying loads of it next year.
Saturday 29th October
A large tub of paint here can cost €25 to €50 so, what with the damp here, it can get expensive. However, last year I saw Nectarius painting the kazani building with ‘asvesti’. This is a very cheap plastic sack of lime paste – it’s in water which is a better idea than the dry powder ready to blow into your eyes. I wondered how that could work since surely it would wash off during the next downpour. It doesn’t. It’s not as durable as the expensive paint but sets like stone and is, of course, what people have been lime-washing their houses with for centuries. It is also porous so allows underlying stone to breathe. From now on I’m going to use it outside, but I wonder if combined with some sort of PVA it would work as an interior paint.
Ah, maybe we’ll be getting one more Internet session in before returning to England.
On a slightly depressing day in which I needed to escape my skull for a while I sat down and read Terry Pratchett’s ‘I Shall Wear Midnight’. With wisdom, comedy, excellent characters and a wonderful story I was taken off to Discworld for a day, and thoroughly enjoyed my trip. With all that is happening to him, and him now having to use voice-recognition to write since he can no longer use a keyboard, this guy still hasn’t lost his sense of humour. I’ve seen the words ‘national treasure’ being bandied about, in one case applied to me (which I suspect many would question), but in his case they couldn’t be more true.
Thursday 27th October
With the population hitting 7 billion, floods and earthquakes demonstrating by death toll how overpopulated our planet is, with the numbers of the unemployed growing, governments in debt and organizations like the EU pushing for more integration and more control, I really couldn’t have chosen a better time for The Departure to be published. Then again, with what looks like an outbreaks of sanity across the planet, with the ‘Arab Spring’, the steady swing towards greater freedom in previously communist regimes, the possible collapse of the Euro and the EU – precursor to the Committee – and with austerity measures including cuts to the state, perhaps things are due to improve. Yeah, right. These are just hiccups along the way. Overall, large parasitic governments continue to accrue power over us, the surveillance society ever expands, the population shows no sign of ceasing to grow (readers of this will probably see 9 billion in their life-times) and the first ID implants can’t be much further down the road. And when the software catches up with the computing, and robotics catches up with both of them, look out for trials of the first shepherds and spiderguns.
I just love the implications in Angela Merkel’s recent statement. I’m paraphrasing here but it goes something like this, ‘[unless we sort out the dept crisis] we can’t guarantee another fifty years of peace and stability.’ What started out as a ‘common market’ is actually an attempt to completely unify and integrate Europe so its individual nations don’t end up at each other’s throats again and as most who have read up on any of this will know, the politicians lied to us right from the start. One can see the desperation of Merkel and her ilk when they haul up and dust off the spectre of the world wars to threaten us. Now if the European Union was taking as its model the USA (as it was, not as it is becoming), I would be cheering her on. However, since most of its governments are run by socialist control freaks the EU increasingly resembles a fast-track version of the Soviet Union, so I’m not cheering. Already it is about bankrupt and looks to be falling apart, and Balkanization may well follow, but then, perhaps that would be better than it actually lasting.
Oh good grief they’re putting the killers of Gaddafi on trial? The world we live in is fucking insane.
Friday 28th October
We have now completely entered the time of year when we mostly stay inside the house with the stove burning, hence more in the way of rants here and fewer pictures and stuff about Crete. I have been sorting out a few things around the house: putting strips of tile around the bottoms of some walls outside for some extra waterproofing and sealing holes here and there. I also discovered that a water-based varnish I bought from Lidl for the wood here, and which didn’t seem much good for that, is great for the stone – soaking in, hardening crumbling stone and leaving a slick waterproof layer. This stuff was under €10 for two litres, which is a lot cheaper than the petra latha (stone oil) I used before, and it goes a lot further, so I’ll be buying loads of it next year.
Saturday 29th October
A large tub of paint here can cost €25 to €50 so, what with the damp here, it can get expensive. However, last year I saw Nectarius painting the kazani building with ‘asvesti’. This is a very cheap plastic sack of lime paste – it’s in water which is a better idea than the dry powder ready to blow into your eyes. I wondered how that could work since surely it would wash off during the next downpour. It doesn’t. It’s not as durable as the expensive paint but sets like stone and is, of course, what people have been lime-washing their houses with for centuries. It is also porous so allows underlying stone to breathe. From now on I’m going to use it outside, but I wonder if combined with some sort of PVA it would work as an interior paint.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Last Post from Crete this Year (Probably)
Wednesday 19th October
I cracked open the cellophane of a DVD last night and inside found a postcard I could use to enter a competition to win a further 10 DVDs. However, the closing date of the competition was December 2008, so I reckon it must have been sitting on our shelf for maybe two years. It was one of a number I bought a while ago on recommendation and because they seemed to conform to my taste. It was Pan’s Labyrinth from Guillermo Del Toro, the director of Hellboy and Blade II and, incidentally, one of those lined up as a director of a section of that Heavy Metal thing I was involved in. Despite being in Spanish with English subtitles the film was absolutely superb and I would recommend it to anyone. As Caroline said, it would have been a bloody good film even without the fantasy elements. But having watched it I do wonder about Del Toro stepping into the Hollywood machine.
The response of some would be that he ‘sold out’ but I perfectly understand how such a move would have been the right thing to do for career opportunities and his bank account. That being said I can also see that if Pan’s Labyrinth had been made in Hollywood the likelihood of us getting a glimpse at Franco’s Spain would have been remote. Almost certainly many of the characters would have been Americans, the setting would have been one Americans could get some handle on, there would have been more explosions and CGI special effects, and it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good.
I see ‘the critics are saying’ that the Booker Prize is being dumbed-down what with, perish the thought, books being judged on their ‘readability’. My goodness, they’ll be judging them next on something as base and plebeian as popularity. The six books contending for the prize were shown and, of course, Caroline and I recognized neither the books nor the authors. Now, I’ve ranted about this sort of thing before, but it always bears repeating. There was this guy who wrote plays and, to ensure they were popular with the plebs and that the tickets sold, he filled them with kings and queens, ghosts, incest, love, betrayals and of course plenty of murder and mayhem. Then there’s another writer who started off writing stories for magazines and newspapers before moving on to produce numerous ‘readable’ books that gained world-wide ‘popularity’ (how dreadful). The first of these was an ‘upstart crow’ full of ‘bombast’ and ‘conceit’ according to one critic, while the second was sneered at by his contemporaries. They were respectively William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. I just have to wonder how many of the books and authors being critically praised in the rarefied field of contemporary ‘literature’ will stand such a test of time. My guess is that they won’t, and that writers like Terry Pratchett and Stephen King will be retrospectively praised by future critics long after Booker prize-winners and the pompous literary critics of our time have turned to dust.
Thursday 20th October
There were riots in Athens yesterday, on the second day of a general strike, and there will probably be more today. I had to allow myself a cynical chuckle about one piece of ‘austerity’ legislation they’re objecting to. Apparently it will now be possible for civil servants to be fired. Ah, the poor little darlings. Now they’ll have to live in the real world like those in the private sector they’ve been parasites on for so long. Now, when they’re lazy, unproductive, corrupt and generally just a waste of space, they can be shown the door. Welcome to the real world!
I’m off to the orthondiyatros (dentist) today to have my teeth cleaned. The guy is a private dentist originally from Iran, and his wife the hygienist. I consider the cost well worth it since in Britain under the NHS a clean of the teeth consists of about five minutes of scraping, followed by some paste and a polishing wheel, then out the door and ‘Next!’ The clean I get here takes over an hour with every tooth individually cleaned. It is the case that only when you start looking at private dental (and medical) care that you realize just how bad the NHS is.
But I wonder if private or public medical care will make any difference for the son of Yorgos (this particular Yorgos is one of the brothers at the Gabbiano, and runs the kitchen there). We wandered in there for a meal a few nights back and noted how down in the mouth they all seemed, and shortly afterwards we found out why. Yorgos’s son, who is 17, had come off his motorbike and broken his back. A vertebra was shattered and pieces of bone shoved into his spinal cord and, because he was thought to be drunk, some people tried to help him up. In the hospital they’re to operate and, as far as I can understand with my limited Greek, rebuild the vertebra with artificial bone. Last I heard the doctors were preparing to tell him that the lack of feeling in his legs has nothing to do with the drugs he’s on and that, at best, he’ll not be walking for a year. At the worst he’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and Crete is certainly not a great place for one of them.
I see that Gaddafi was found, just like Saddam Hussein, in a hole in the ground. Since he was found by Libyan fighters he didn’t last for very long after that. Of course I already hear some twats crying that he should have been captured alive, questioned and tried, and all his crimes closely examined. Oh, and right now they’re whiffling on about how he had surrendered before he was shot. Bollocks. He was responsible for thousands of deaths, including all those people taken out by the Semtex he supplied to the IRA. Good riddance.
Friday 21st October
After much partying over the night many Libyans are waking up this morning with joy in their hearts and enthusiasm to rebuild their society, and hand in hand they’ll venture into a brave new future. Then, as the party atmosphere dies, and as they start clearing up the mess, and as they start turning and threading the nuts-and-bolts of their society, they’ll begin discovering that the guys they were fighting alongside have altogether different enthusiasms and a completely different idea of what constitutes a ‘brave new future’. While some Libyans will be looking forward to voting in a democracy, others will be thumping their heads against prayer mats and dreaming of caliphate, of Sharia law and insuring western influence is forced out, and they, and others, will be gathering up guns and explosives and harbouring tribal thoughts of vengeance. Expect the bickering to start if not now then in a few weeks, then wait for the killing to ensue. If I’m wrong about this I’ll be very happy; if I’m right I’ll be utterly unsurprised.
Ah, it’s like coming home hearing the sound of electric chisels, the thump of hammers and the chug of diesel engines. Mikalis, who rebuilt our ‘ruin’, has now set to work next door. First on the agenda is digging out a trench three and a half metres deep around the neighbour’s back walls ready to seal them with a membrane and concrete. Little side jobs include chiselling out cracks and sealing them, lifting broken and badly-laid tiles and making repairs. Future jobs will, I suspect, include joining roof plates with steel and concrete, tearing up all the tiles to put down a layer of sealant, and putting down new tiles with the correct slopes on for drainage since two corners of the roof collect pools of water at least an inch deep. With any luck Jean-Pierre won’t have water running out of electric sockets and buckets spread throughout his house to collect water the next time it rains.
Saturday 22nd October
Apparently the UN wants a ‘full investigation’ into how Gaddafi died. Why? Why do they want to piss money up the wall finding out? Oh yeah, got to ensure their liberal credentials. Like numerous similar tossers appearing on the TV lately they have to frown and beat their breasts over such uncivilized behaviour. They have to demonstrate their moral superiority over other more primitive peoples. Of course these liberal pricks fail to realize that their patronizing attitude is tantamount to the racism they supposedly abhor. And don’t these same pricks also believe in equality? Then why aren’t they demanding investigations into all the other deaths in Libya? By demanding an investigation into Gaddafi’s death they are showing how they feel his life was more important than other lives. But of course they are all political animals so probably don’t like seeing summary justice dispensed to their kind, since it might be dispensed to them next.
So, the world population is going to be reaching 7 billion this month. When I was born in 1961 it had just passed 3 billion and in the mid 70s passed 4 billion and by 1990 passed 5 billion. The rate of growth now, apparently, is about 80 million per year – more than the population of Britain each year. This is why a major tsunami kills 300,000, floods in India or Thailand kill hundreds and make thousands homeless (probably because so many of them are now living on flood plains and so much land that would have soaked up the water is networked with drainage ditches or under concrete and tarmac) and why earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes now have larger body-counts. This is why so many natural disasters are such disasters. So the next time some ‘environmentally conscious’ twonk connects such events to the usual shibboleth or berates you for not sorting your trash properly or for driving a big car, ask how many kids he or she has.
Tuesday 25th October
When Mikalis and crew did the roof on our ‘ruin’ they first piled sand and cement on the roof of the house next door, then brought up a concrete mixer, then mixed the concrete, whereupon a team of six guys hauled it by bucket to the new roof. That’s the thing about building work in these villages: the work itself is difficult enough but getting materials and machines where needed can sometimes be even more difficult. I therefore wondered how Mikalis intended to go about concreting the back wall of the neighbour’s house. Now I know: he is pumping the wet mix through a pipe:
Oh, and here’s one of the builders in flight for the delectation of all those safety officers out there:
I cracked open the cellophane of a DVD last night and inside found a postcard I could use to enter a competition to win a further 10 DVDs. However, the closing date of the competition was December 2008, so I reckon it must have been sitting on our shelf for maybe two years. It was one of a number I bought a while ago on recommendation and because they seemed to conform to my taste. It was Pan’s Labyrinth from Guillermo Del Toro, the director of Hellboy and Blade II and, incidentally, one of those lined up as a director of a section of that Heavy Metal thing I was involved in. Despite being in Spanish with English subtitles the film was absolutely superb and I would recommend it to anyone. As Caroline said, it would have been a bloody good film even without the fantasy elements. But having watched it I do wonder about Del Toro stepping into the Hollywood machine.
The response of some would be that he ‘sold out’ but I perfectly understand how such a move would have been the right thing to do for career opportunities and his bank account. That being said I can also see that if Pan’s Labyrinth had been made in Hollywood the likelihood of us getting a glimpse at Franco’s Spain would have been remote. Almost certainly many of the characters would have been Americans, the setting would have been one Americans could get some handle on, there would have been more explosions and CGI special effects, and it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good.
I see ‘the critics are saying’ that the Booker Prize is being dumbed-down what with, perish the thought, books being judged on their ‘readability’. My goodness, they’ll be judging them next on something as base and plebeian as popularity. The six books contending for the prize were shown and, of course, Caroline and I recognized neither the books nor the authors. Now, I’ve ranted about this sort of thing before, but it always bears repeating. There was this guy who wrote plays and, to ensure they were popular with the plebs and that the tickets sold, he filled them with kings and queens, ghosts, incest, love, betrayals and of course plenty of murder and mayhem. Then there’s another writer who started off writing stories for magazines and newspapers before moving on to produce numerous ‘readable’ books that gained world-wide ‘popularity’ (how dreadful). The first of these was an ‘upstart crow’ full of ‘bombast’ and ‘conceit’ according to one critic, while the second was sneered at by his contemporaries. They were respectively William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. I just have to wonder how many of the books and authors being critically praised in the rarefied field of contemporary ‘literature’ will stand such a test of time. My guess is that they won’t, and that writers like Terry Pratchett and Stephen King will be retrospectively praised by future critics long after Booker prize-winners and the pompous literary critics of our time have turned to dust.
Thursday 20th October
There were riots in Athens yesterday, on the second day of a general strike, and there will probably be more today. I had to allow myself a cynical chuckle about one piece of ‘austerity’ legislation they’re objecting to. Apparently it will now be possible for civil servants to be fired. Ah, the poor little darlings. Now they’ll have to live in the real world like those in the private sector they’ve been parasites on for so long. Now, when they’re lazy, unproductive, corrupt and generally just a waste of space, they can be shown the door. Welcome to the real world!
I’m off to the orthondiyatros (dentist) today to have my teeth cleaned. The guy is a private dentist originally from Iran, and his wife the hygienist. I consider the cost well worth it since in Britain under the NHS a clean of the teeth consists of about five minutes of scraping, followed by some paste and a polishing wheel, then out the door and ‘Next!’ The clean I get here takes over an hour with every tooth individually cleaned. It is the case that only when you start looking at private dental (and medical) care that you realize just how bad the NHS is.
But I wonder if private or public medical care will make any difference for the son of Yorgos (this particular Yorgos is one of the brothers at the Gabbiano, and runs the kitchen there). We wandered in there for a meal a few nights back and noted how down in the mouth they all seemed, and shortly afterwards we found out why. Yorgos’s son, who is 17, had come off his motorbike and broken his back. A vertebra was shattered and pieces of bone shoved into his spinal cord and, because he was thought to be drunk, some people tried to help him up. In the hospital they’re to operate and, as far as I can understand with my limited Greek, rebuild the vertebra with artificial bone. Last I heard the doctors were preparing to tell him that the lack of feeling in his legs has nothing to do with the drugs he’s on and that, at best, he’ll not be walking for a year. At the worst he’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and Crete is certainly not a great place for one of them.
I see that Gaddafi was found, just like Saddam Hussein, in a hole in the ground. Since he was found by Libyan fighters he didn’t last for very long after that. Of course I already hear some twats crying that he should have been captured alive, questioned and tried, and all his crimes closely examined. Oh, and right now they’re whiffling on about how he had surrendered before he was shot. Bollocks. He was responsible for thousands of deaths, including all those people taken out by the Semtex he supplied to the IRA. Good riddance.
Friday 21st October
After much partying over the night many Libyans are waking up this morning with joy in their hearts and enthusiasm to rebuild their society, and hand in hand they’ll venture into a brave new future. Then, as the party atmosphere dies, and as they start clearing up the mess, and as they start turning and threading the nuts-and-bolts of their society, they’ll begin discovering that the guys they were fighting alongside have altogether different enthusiasms and a completely different idea of what constitutes a ‘brave new future’. While some Libyans will be looking forward to voting in a democracy, others will be thumping their heads against prayer mats and dreaming of caliphate, of Sharia law and insuring western influence is forced out, and they, and others, will be gathering up guns and explosives and harbouring tribal thoughts of vengeance. Expect the bickering to start if not now then in a few weeks, then wait for the killing to ensue. If I’m wrong about this I’ll be very happy; if I’m right I’ll be utterly unsurprised.
Ah, it’s like coming home hearing the sound of electric chisels, the thump of hammers and the chug of diesel engines. Mikalis, who rebuilt our ‘ruin’, has now set to work next door. First on the agenda is digging out a trench three and a half metres deep around the neighbour’s back walls ready to seal them with a membrane and concrete. Little side jobs include chiselling out cracks and sealing them, lifting broken and badly-laid tiles and making repairs. Future jobs will, I suspect, include joining roof plates with steel and concrete, tearing up all the tiles to put down a layer of sealant, and putting down new tiles with the correct slopes on for drainage since two corners of the roof collect pools of water at least an inch deep. With any luck Jean-Pierre won’t have water running out of electric sockets and buckets spread throughout his house to collect water the next time it rains.
Saturday 22nd October
Apparently the UN wants a ‘full investigation’ into how Gaddafi died. Why? Why do they want to piss money up the wall finding out? Oh yeah, got to ensure their liberal credentials. Like numerous similar tossers appearing on the TV lately they have to frown and beat their breasts over such uncivilized behaviour. They have to demonstrate their moral superiority over other more primitive peoples. Of course these liberal pricks fail to realize that their patronizing attitude is tantamount to the racism they supposedly abhor. And don’t these same pricks also believe in equality? Then why aren’t they demanding investigations into all the other deaths in Libya? By demanding an investigation into Gaddafi’s death they are showing how they feel his life was more important than other lives. But of course they are all political animals so probably don’t like seeing summary justice dispensed to their kind, since it might be dispensed to them next.
So, the world population is going to be reaching 7 billion this month. When I was born in 1961 it had just passed 3 billion and in the mid 70s passed 4 billion and by 1990 passed 5 billion. The rate of growth now, apparently, is about 80 million per year – more than the population of Britain each year. This is why a major tsunami kills 300,000, floods in India or Thailand kill hundreds and make thousands homeless (probably because so many of them are now living on flood plains and so much land that would have soaked up the water is networked with drainage ditches or under concrete and tarmac) and why earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes now have larger body-counts. This is why so many natural disasters are such disasters. So the next time some ‘environmentally conscious’ twonk connects such events to the usual shibboleth or berates you for not sorting your trash properly or for driving a big car, ask how many kids he or she has.
Tuesday 25th October
When Mikalis and crew did the roof on our ‘ruin’ they first piled sand and cement on the roof of the house next door, then brought up a concrete mixer, then mixed the concrete, whereupon a team of six guys hauled it by bucket to the new roof. That’s the thing about building work in these villages: the work itself is difficult enough but getting materials and machines where needed can sometimes be even more difficult. I therefore wondered how Mikalis intended to go about concreting the back wall of the neighbour’s house. Now I know: he is pumping the wet mix through a pipe:
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
And Rain Like a Vertical Sea
Wednesday 12th October
I’m grumpy this morning. Doing my usual insomniac thing I was awake at 4.30 and just couldn’t get back to sleep. Next, upon getting up at about 5.30, I saw that rain had managed to get into the stove flue and sooty water had dripped over the tiles and splashed up the kitchen cupboard. This is doubly annoying because it leaked last week and, yesterday, I decided to solve the problem: the first section of flue sloped down as it entered the house so any water that came down the chimney and managed to get in the end would run inwards. I chiselled out the hole in the wall by hand to alter the slope of that section, then chiselled outside to ensure water coming down the chimney ran out of the wall (the chimney is set in the wall) and into a drain pipe connected to our waste water. I can only assume that our revolving French chimney pot, which has nicely increased the draw on the fire, isn’t keeping the water out, and that last night we had one of those ‘vertical sea’ rainfalls we get here. I need to buy an electric chisel to open up the wall to increase the slope of the drain and fit some kind of baffle.
But things aren’t as bad here as they are for our neighbour. Like us four years ago he is about to spend his first winter in a house that looks wonderful and is in a wonderful location, but was built before anyone thought of damp courses, has a soggy garden sitting against the back wall (three metres deep) with no drainage at all, and was renovated by the sort of monkeys who would sell you a car in England that looks okay until you get it round the corner, whereupon the filler falls out, the exhaust drops off and the engine heat burns a hole through the wooden piston. He has mud leaching through to stain the paintwork of his back wall, leaking windows and has already experienced the joys of stepping out of bed into a swimming pool. Later he’ll have the pleasure of watching his ceilings turn black with mould, and falling asleep to the sound of water dripping into buckets.
I’m still having trouble with the damned stove flue. I stripped the aluminium tape off the joints, dried and cleaned them, put fire cement round them and new aluminium tape. But there’s water still in the flue and in the joints so with the heat from the fire it buggers up the water-based fire cement and steams under the glue of the aluminium tape and leaks again. I’ve cleaned off the joints yet again and now have bucket under them while I keep the fire running in the hope of drying them out. Next I’ll put on fire cement and wait until it dries solid before putting on the aluminium tape. Ah the joys of having a stove...
Friday 14th October
Here are some pictures for Chris Haringa and others who have visited Makrigialos over this last year. This disappearance of the beach seems to be becoming a regular yearly thing. From hearsay I learned that this has always happened, but from hearsay I have also learned that the beach used to be twice as wide (possibly until they built a rock barrier across the harbour). It gets eaten away like this when the wind is from the south and there have been storms out at sea (apparently).
One must always take people’s assertions about what the weather does with a large pinch of salt. Weather changes by the hour, day, week, month and seasonally and it changes in cycles of years, decades, centuries and of course thousands of years and more. When someone told me it never rains here from June to August, I should have remembered that she had only lived here for three of four years, or when Yorgos in Revans was amazed by a heavy downpour in June, I should remember that he has lived here for a mere lifetime. Our weather forecasters can’t predict the weather, except in very general terms, for more than a week (though Piers Corbyn manages to do better than the Met Office super computer), so hearsay should be ignored. When someone cries, ‘This has never happened before, something major is changing!’ I should note that an ant here might say the same the first time its nest gets hit by the garden hose.
And here, four days later, the beach is back:
I’ve maybe solved the leaking stove flue problem. It leaked again on Thursday and I realized, by the position of the leak and the lack of rain, that the problem wasn’t really rain getting inside it. It is very damp here at the moment and the enamelled insides of the new flues are perfectly smooth. Condensation is gathering and running straight to the bottom of the flue and then into the joints, subsequent heating flexes those joints and boils the water in them, pushing it underneath the aluminium tape. I’ve now used heat-rated instant gasket on them and on the worst one wrapped round thin steel and a large jubilee clip, then the aluminium tape. Fingers crossed!
Monday 17th October
Well, using the perfectly unscientific method of estimating from how much buckets sitting out in the garden have been filling up, I would say we’ve had over a foot of rain during the last week and a half. The water butt filled up during the first day of heavy rain and I’ve now diverted the drain pipe so the water runs down the path to our house. I’ve no need to collect the grey water from the house, and I finished connecting up the drain pipe from the ‘ruin’ to take the water off the back garden. Thereafter I sealed various broken tiles and cracks (the second step between roofs is still in need of work and won’t be done this year, so there was plenty to do there) and now I keep checking the internal walls and ceilings in the expectation of seeing water coming in. I rather suspect our neighbour is looking for places where the water is not coming in, and is probably going to bed wearing a snorkel.
I see we have George Soros (the absolute apex of lefty hypocrisy with his righteous prating while sitting on a $22 billion fortune) funded protests on Wall Street and elsewhere in the world. The usual anti-capitalists are there, and all the sign-wavers are objecting to corporate power and profits, government-enforced austerity, governments supporting the banks, the rich getting richer and the poor, well, not getting richer, and a lack of jobs (and in the mix are a few puzzled looking hippies who dug out signs they used to wave about in the sixties). Some of what they are saying I absolutely agree with, and some not. Objecting about the rich getting richer is just the plain envy that is the engine at the heart of socialism. The lack of jobs should not even be in the remit of governments, and them creating jobs (usually in the public sector) is one whole chunk of the problem: using tax money to create jobs is like running a car by taking out the petrol, then spilling half of it while putting it back in again.
Austerity is a good idea, however, if that means hacking down the state sector, but it’s a really crap idea for wealth and job creation if it means ramping up taxes to keep the state sector funded. Even an idiot must realize that by putting up taxes you get a toxic combination of everything going up in price while people have less to spend. Supporting bankrupt governments is a mistake: we need something better than them mortgaging our future to support bloated parasitic state sectors. Supporting the banks was a mistake too: they should have taken a fall and those responsible should have been prosecuted for fraud. In fact (and I hate to say this), they should not have been allowed to fuck up so badly in the first place, because it’s true that they, and those wielding corporate power, do need to be controlled. Where was the legislation and oversight to stop them playing fast and loose with other people’s money? Probably either unavailable or unenforced, because the problem we have here is that our legislators, who managed to piss all our money up the wall and rack up massive debts, are precisely the wrong people to draw up the rules and enforce them. You don’t put paedophiles in charge of the day-care centre. What’s the answer? I think it starts with a combination of ropes, lamp-posts and politicians, but then that’s just me.
Tuesday 18th October
I few days ago I felt a pain in the sole of my foot and, inspecting it, saw what looked like a thorn stuck in there. However, closer inspection revealed a white sac on the blunt end. It looked like a torn-off sting from one of the scorpions around here. My foot was hot and painful for just a few minutes, and then it settled down to itching, which it did for three days. If the sting had been elsewhere I would have gone through the skin with my fingernails, but then such itching is the same with mosquito bites so nothing unusual. I never found the rest of the scorpion, and I wish I’d kept the sting to put under my USB microscope!
Raki time draws nigh and, in preparation, Nectarius was here with three Albanian masons who stone-clad the back concrete wall of the kazani. Whether they were going to clad all the concrete I don’t know. It might be that the heavy rain or Nectarius’s generosity with the raki finished their working day. Certainly the stone already up needs pointing:
So Hamas are getting a thousand prisoners back in exchange for one Israeli soldier and of course consider that a victory. It occurs to me that the Israelis could assert that one of their soldiers is worth a thousand Palestinian terrorists.
We sat watching a satellite channel called Persian Star last night, which shows English language films etc. The commercial breaks are hilarious and consist entirely of adverts for hair care products, condoms and slimming pills. Apparently using the condoms results in couples leaping through falling rose petals, one of the hair products is a miraculous herbal cure for baldness and the slimming pills knock twenty-five years off fat fifty-year-old men and provide them with a six-pack. I just have to wonder if Persian Star is broadcast in Iran, and why the people involved haven’t been stoned to death yet. Or could it be that the way the majority of the people live there has little to do with the jingoistic drivel coming out of the mouths of their politicians (rather like us), and even less to do with religious fanaticism and nutters with bombs?
I’m grumpy this morning. Doing my usual insomniac thing I was awake at 4.30 and just couldn’t get back to sleep. Next, upon getting up at about 5.30, I saw that rain had managed to get into the stove flue and sooty water had dripped over the tiles and splashed up the kitchen cupboard. This is doubly annoying because it leaked last week and, yesterday, I decided to solve the problem: the first section of flue sloped down as it entered the house so any water that came down the chimney and managed to get in the end would run inwards. I chiselled out the hole in the wall by hand to alter the slope of that section, then chiselled outside to ensure water coming down the chimney ran out of the wall (the chimney is set in the wall) and into a drain pipe connected to our waste water. I can only assume that our revolving French chimney pot, which has nicely increased the draw on the fire, isn’t keeping the water out, and that last night we had one of those ‘vertical sea’ rainfalls we get here. I need to buy an electric chisel to open up the wall to increase the slope of the drain and fit some kind of baffle.
But things aren’t as bad here as they are for our neighbour. Like us four years ago he is about to spend his first winter in a house that looks wonderful and is in a wonderful location, but was built before anyone thought of damp courses, has a soggy garden sitting against the back wall (three metres deep) with no drainage at all, and was renovated by the sort of monkeys who would sell you a car in England that looks okay until you get it round the corner, whereupon the filler falls out, the exhaust drops off and the engine heat burns a hole through the wooden piston. He has mud leaching through to stain the paintwork of his back wall, leaking windows and has already experienced the joys of stepping out of bed into a swimming pool. Later he’ll have the pleasure of watching his ceilings turn black with mould, and falling asleep to the sound of water dripping into buckets.
I’m still having trouble with the damned stove flue. I stripped the aluminium tape off the joints, dried and cleaned them, put fire cement round them and new aluminium tape. But there’s water still in the flue and in the joints so with the heat from the fire it buggers up the water-based fire cement and steams under the glue of the aluminium tape and leaks again. I’ve cleaned off the joints yet again and now have bucket under them while I keep the fire running in the hope of drying them out. Next I’ll put on fire cement and wait until it dries solid before putting on the aluminium tape. Ah the joys of having a stove...
Friday 14th October
Here are some pictures for Chris Haringa and others who have visited Makrigialos over this last year. This disappearance of the beach seems to be becoming a regular yearly thing. From hearsay I learned that this has always happened, but from hearsay I have also learned that the beach used to be twice as wide (possibly until they built a rock barrier across the harbour). It gets eaten away like this when the wind is from the south and there have been storms out at sea (apparently).
One must always take people’s assertions about what the weather does with a large pinch of salt. Weather changes by the hour, day, week, month and seasonally and it changes in cycles of years, decades, centuries and of course thousands of years and more. When someone told me it never rains here from June to August, I should have remembered that she had only lived here for three of four years, or when Yorgos in Revans was amazed by a heavy downpour in June, I should remember that he has lived here for a mere lifetime. Our weather forecasters can’t predict the weather, except in very general terms, for more than a week (though Piers Corbyn manages to do better than the Met Office super computer), so hearsay should be ignored. When someone cries, ‘This has never happened before, something major is changing!’ I should note that an ant here might say the same the first time its nest gets hit by the garden hose.
And here, four days later, the beach is back:
I’ve maybe solved the leaking stove flue problem. It leaked again on Thursday and I realized, by the position of the leak and the lack of rain, that the problem wasn’t really rain getting inside it. It is very damp here at the moment and the enamelled insides of the new flues are perfectly smooth. Condensation is gathering and running straight to the bottom of the flue and then into the joints, subsequent heating flexes those joints and boils the water in them, pushing it underneath the aluminium tape. I’ve now used heat-rated instant gasket on them and on the worst one wrapped round thin steel and a large jubilee clip, then the aluminium tape. Fingers crossed!
Monday 17th October
Well, using the perfectly unscientific method of estimating from how much buckets sitting out in the garden have been filling up, I would say we’ve had over a foot of rain during the last week and a half. The water butt filled up during the first day of heavy rain and I’ve now diverted the drain pipe so the water runs down the path to our house. I’ve no need to collect the grey water from the house, and I finished connecting up the drain pipe from the ‘ruin’ to take the water off the back garden. Thereafter I sealed various broken tiles and cracks (the second step between roofs is still in need of work and won’t be done this year, so there was plenty to do there) and now I keep checking the internal walls and ceilings in the expectation of seeing water coming in. I rather suspect our neighbour is looking for places where the water is not coming in, and is probably going to bed wearing a snorkel.
I see we have George Soros (the absolute apex of lefty hypocrisy with his righteous prating while sitting on a $22 billion fortune) funded protests on Wall Street and elsewhere in the world. The usual anti-capitalists are there, and all the sign-wavers are objecting to corporate power and profits, government-enforced austerity, governments supporting the banks, the rich getting richer and the poor, well, not getting richer, and a lack of jobs (and in the mix are a few puzzled looking hippies who dug out signs they used to wave about in the sixties). Some of what they are saying I absolutely agree with, and some not. Objecting about the rich getting richer is just the plain envy that is the engine at the heart of socialism. The lack of jobs should not even be in the remit of governments, and them creating jobs (usually in the public sector) is one whole chunk of the problem: using tax money to create jobs is like running a car by taking out the petrol, then spilling half of it while putting it back in again.
Austerity is a good idea, however, if that means hacking down the state sector, but it’s a really crap idea for wealth and job creation if it means ramping up taxes to keep the state sector funded. Even an idiot must realize that by putting up taxes you get a toxic combination of everything going up in price while people have less to spend. Supporting bankrupt governments is a mistake: we need something better than them mortgaging our future to support bloated parasitic state sectors. Supporting the banks was a mistake too: they should have taken a fall and those responsible should have been prosecuted for fraud. In fact (and I hate to say this), they should not have been allowed to fuck up so badly in the first place, because it’s true that they, and those wielding corporate power, do need to be controlled. Where was the legislation and oversight to stop them playing fast and loose with other people’s money? Probably either unavailable or unenforced, because the problem we have here is that our legislators, who managed to piss all our money up the wall and rack up massive debts, are precisely the wrong people to draw up the rules and enforce them. You don’t put paedophiles in charge of the day-care centre. What’s the answer? I think it starts with a combination of ropes, lamp-posts and politicians, but then that’s just me.
Tuesday 18th October
I few days ago I felt a pain in the sole of my foot and, inspecting it, saw what looked like a thorn stuck in there. However, closer inspection revealed a white sac on the blunt end. It looked like a torn-off sting from one of the scorpions around here. My foot was hot and painful for just a few minutes, and then it settled down to itching, which it did for three days. If the sting had been elsewhere I would have gone through the skin with my fingernails, but then such itching is the same with mosquito bites so nothing unusual. I never found the rest of the scorpion, and I wish I’d kept the sting to put under my USB microscope!
Raki time draws nigh and, in preparation, Nectarius was here with three Albanian masons who stone-clad the back concrete wall of the kazani. Whether they were going to clad all the concrete I don’t know. It might be that the heavy rain or Nectarius’s generosity with the raki finished their working day. Certainly the stone already up needs pointing:
So Hamas are getting a thousand prisoners back in exchange for one Israeli soldier and of course consider that a victory. It occurs to me that the Israelis could assert that one of their soldiers is worth a thousand Palestinian terrorists.
We sat watching a satellite channel called Persian Star last night, which shows English language films etc. The commercial breaks are hilarious and consist entirely of adverts for hair care products, condoms and slimming pills. Apparently using the condoms results in couples leaping through falling rose petals, one of the hair products is a miraculous herbal cure for baldness and the slimming pills knock twenty-five years off fat fifty-year-old men and provide them with a six-pack. I just have to wonder if Persian Star is broadcast in Iran, and why the people involved haven’t been stoned to death yet. Or could it be that the way the majority of the people live there has little to do with the jingoistic drivel coming out of the mouths of their politicians (rather like us), and even less to do with religious fanaticism and nutters with bombs?
Monday, October 10, 2011
Still Sombre
Tuesday 4th October
Every now and again, when we had Sky TV, I would catch part of an episode of Farscape and think to myself, ‘Mmm, now that looks interesting’. I never got round to watching a full episode and I never actually figured out what was going on. However, I did pick up four episodes of it in a charity shop and on the strength of those bought the entire first season. We finally sat down for a Farscape-fest about a week ago and at episode 12, about three episodes after Caroline, I finally felt that old Vorlon malady of my intestine crawling up my spine to strangle my brain. I like the Henson puppetry and special effects, and I could see huge potential for a story arc there, but the stories themselves are dire, and probably because of that, the acting was a bit naff and often sliding into silly melodrama. This will go to one of the bars here for someone to enjoy, or not. I’ll not go any further because life if too damned short for this kind of dreck. Such a shame.
Wednesday 5th October
It’s time today to change the stove pipes. They’ve been up for two years, are blocked again and almost certainly reaching the stage where rust holes will start to punch through. They are also the cheap galvanized ones that don’t look all that great.
There we go: I’ve replaced them with the enamelled version they have here, though admittedly mainly because those were the only ones they had in the hardware shop in Makrigialos, and I couldn’t be bothered with a trip to Sitia for the cheaper version.
The main galvanized pipes inside the house weren’t too bad, so I’ve left them down by the bin where, as is usual here, if someone wants them they’ll grab them, or passing gypsies will pick them up as scrap metal. And if not the dustmen will take them away. There’s none of the silly penalties for not closing the bin lid, or making sure everything is inside, or putting your rubbish out on the wrong day. That might be a bit difficult to enforce since one bin serves about ten houses, and the Greek wouldn’t put up with it anyway.
It’s a lovely October day today with the temperature in the steady mid 20s today and very little wind. It will get colder in the evening and, when we fire up the stove again, we’ll need the windows open to get rid of the fumes from the new pipes, aluminium tape and the releasing fluid I used while forcing some of the pipes together.
Thursday 6th October
Still on the learning curve ... So, until recently I’ve always called (and I’ll use phonetic spelling) a stove pipe a ‘somber solina’, which is a literal translation. Whilst asking Kostis, at Revans, where I could buy some new stove pipes in Makrigialos, he came out with the words ‘boori, booria & kaminatha’. I found the last of these to mean chimney, whilst also discovering that a chimney can also be a ‘kapnothokos’ but couldn’t find the other words under the letter vita (beta). I later learnt that the two words do not begin with vita, but with the digraph µπ which gives the sound of our letter ‘B’. A boori is a section of flue, while booria is the plural.
Meanwhile, being unable to sleep in the middle of one night, I spent some time searching for boori. I didn’t find it then but I did find ‘votsalo’ (beginning with vita) which means pebble, and now know that a taverna down by Makrigialos harbour, called Votsala, translates as ‘Pebbles’. The mnemonic I now use to retain this is an odd one. Just along the harbour edge from Votsala is a place called ‘Makis’, which is named after the owner who, we were told and now thoroughly agree with, looks like Fred Flintstone. Now Fred Flintstone has a daughter called Pebbles... I’ve subsequently learned that there’s another taverna in Koutsouras called Votasalachia. Now knowing that the addition of that ‘achi’ (or ‘aki’ on the mainland) at the end of a word reduces the size of the object concerned (the additional ‘a’ making it plural), this other place translates as something like ‘Little Pebbles’.
Friday 7th October
Here you go, this shows you how thoroughly entrenched science fiction is in my mind. Whenever I see one of these buggers I think they’re fascinating, but the first image to arise in my mind is a vaguely recollected picture on a cover of a Fred Saberhagen book:
Sunday 9th October
It’s muggy grey and pouring with rain today, but is hardly what you could describe as cold, the temperature right now, at 10.00AM, being 21.4C. However, we are keeping the stove on and chugging away at the lowest possible setting because it’s nice, comforting, and we like it. The problem here is that with the new stove pipes, well dried wood and one of those revolving French chimneys above, the lowest possible setting leads to a house temperature of about 27C, even with windows and doors open. I salve my conscience with the knowledge that wood is carbon neutral, we’re not using the cooker (everything goes on top of the stove, like today’s chicken, leek and butter-bean soup), and having bought the wood I’m helping to prop up the Greek economy (removes tongue from cheek).
Monday 10th October
Okay, so you have this space ship which on conventional drive can only accelerate to about half the speed of light. It does, however, have a ‘hyperspace drive’ it can engage when it has built up enough velocity. This time, when the crew engages that drive, it goes wrong and upon being shut down hurls the ship out into normal space travelling at nine-tenths of the speed of light. The ship then decelerates to finally dock at its destination space station.
Now, read through the above again and if you can’t work out what is completely wrong with that scenario, then don’t try to write science fiction.
Another thing you really need to know is the difference between speed and acceleration and that, in vacuum, an object travelling at say, a thousand miles an hour, will, without some force applied to decelerate or accelerate it, continue travelling at that speed forever. Go look up Newton’s laws of motion.
Every now and again, when we had Sky TV, I would catch part of an episode of Farscape and think to myself, ‘Mmm, now that looks interesting’. I never got round to watching a full episode and I never actually figured out what was going on. However, I did pick up four episodes of it in a charity shop and on the strength of those bought the entire first season. We finally sat down for a Farscape-fest about a week ago and at episode 12, about three episodes after Caroline, I finally felt that old Vorlon malady of my intestine crawling up my spine to strangle my brain. I like the Henson puppetry and special effects, and I could see huge potential for a story arc there, but the stories themselves are dire, and probably because of that, the acting was a bit naff and often sliding into silly melodrama. This will go to one of the bars here for someone to enjoy, or not. I’ll not go any further because life if too damned short for this kind of dreck. Such a shame.
Wednesday 5th October
It’s time today to change the stove pipes. They’ve been up for two years, are blocked again and almost certainly reaching the stage where rust holes will start to punch through. They are also the cheap galvanized ones that don’t look all that great.
There we go: I’ve replaced them with the enamelled version they have here, though admittedly mainly because those were the only ones they had in the hardware shop in Makrigialos, and I couldn’t be bothered with a trip to Sitia for the cheaper version.
The main galvanized pipes inside the house weren’t too bad, so I’ve left them down by the bin where, as is usual here, if someone wants them they’ll grab them, or passing gypsies will pick them up as scrap metal. And if not the dustmen will take them away. There’s none of the silly penalties for not closing the bin lid, or making sure everything is inside, or putting your rubbish out on the wrong day. That might be a bit difficult to enforce since one bin serves about ten houses, and the Greek wouldn’t put up with it anyway.
It’s a lovely October day today with the temperature in the steady mid 20s today and very little wind. It will get colder in the evening and, when we fire up the stove again, we’ll need the windows open to get rid of the fumes from the new pipes, aluminium tape and the releasing fluid I used while forcing some of the pipes together.
Thursday 6th October
Still on the learning curve ... So, until recently I’ve always called (and I’ll use phonetic spelling) a stove pipe a ‘somber solina’, which is a literal translation. Whilst asking Kostis, at Revans, where I could buy some new stove pipes in Makrigialos, he came out with the words ‘boori, booria & kaminatha’. I found the last of these to mean chimney, whilst also discovering that a chimney can also be a ‘kapnothokos’ but couldn’t find the other words under the letter vita (beta). I later learnt that the two words do not begin with vita, but with the digraph µπ which gives the sound of our letter ‘B’. A boori is a section of flue, while booria is the plural.
Meanwhile, being unable to sleep in the middle of one night, I spent some time searching for boori. I didn’t find it then but I did find ‘votsalo’ (beginning with vita) which means pebble, and now know that a taverna down by Makrigialos harbour, called Votsala, translates as ‘Pebbles’. The mnemonic I now use to retain this is an odd one. Just along the harbour edge from Votsala is a place called ‘Makis’, which is named after the owner who, we were told and now thoroughly agree with, looks like Fred Flintstone. Now Fred Flintstone has a daughter called Pebbles... I’ve subsequently learned that there’s another taverna in Koutsouras called Votasalachia. Now knowing that the addition of that ‘achi’ (or ‘aki’ on the mainland) at the end of a word reduces the size of the object concerned (the additional ‘a’ making it plural), this other place translates as something like ‘Little Pebbles’.
Friday 7th October
Here you go, this shows you how thoroughly entrenched science fiction is in my mind. Whenever I see one of these buggers I think they’re fascinating, but the first image to arise in my mind is a vaguely recollected picture on a cover of a Fred Saberhagen book:
Sunday 9th October
It’s muggy grey and pouring with rain today, but is hardly what you could describe as cold, the temperature right now, at 10.00AM, being 21.4C. However, we are keeping the stove on and chugging away at the lowest possible setting because it’s nice, comforting, and we like it. The problem here is that with the new stove pipes, well dried wood and one of those revolving French chimneys above, the lowest possible setting leads to a house temperature of about 27C, even with windows and doors open. I salve my conscience with the knowledge that wood is carbon neutral, we’re not using the cooker (everything goes on top of the stove, like today’s chicken, leek and butter-bean soup), and having bought the wood I’m helping to prop up the Greek economy (removes tongue from cheek).
Monday 10th October
Okay, so you have this space ship which on conventional drive can only accelerate to about half the speed of light. It does, however, have a ‘hyperspace drive’ it can engage when it has built up enough velocity. This time, when the crew engages that drive, it goes wrong and upon being shut down hurls the ship out into normal space travelling at nine-tenths of the speed of light. The ship then decelerates to finally dock at its destination space station.
Now, read through the above again and if you can’t work out what is completely wrong with that scenario, then don’t try to write science fiction.
Another thing you really need to know is the difference between speed and acceleration and that, in vacuum, an object travelling at say, a thousand miles an hour, will, without some force applied to decelerate or accelerate it, continue travelling at that speed forever. Go look up Newton’s laws of motion.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)