High Anxiety!

I have found recently that it is taking me ages to read a book. It’s not because I’m not caring about the characters. The books where the characters leave me cold end up on the ‘I’ll finish reading it when I can be arsed’ pile which has expanded remarkably over the years. I really ought to dump them. No, with these recent books it’s because I care so much about the characters and I see so much nastiness rolling towards them that I have to take small sips of the story to keep my anxiety for the characters at a low level. This was the case with The Windup Girl where disaster was obviously hovering, waiting to pounce on all the characters. It was the case with ‘Swordspoint’ where I really cared about Alec and De Vries and wanted them to have a nice comfortable life. How likely is that for a swordsman and his lover? Even worse, I’m currently reading `Blueheart’ which I have to take in a couple of pages at a time. The stakes are high. The characters are working with incomplete information and all trying to do their best within their somewhat compromised ethical frameworks. Once I’ve read the entire book and the tension is resolved I’ll be able to read it again with a level of comfort and probably enjoy it far more.

In this case, ironically, it is the art of the novelist that makes this so difficult to read. If I felt that it would all end happily ever after (as in Doctor Who or any series novel) I would be far less anxious (but it would be far less meaningful). The books that have knocked me sideways and have left me changed have never been the comfortable ones. ‘The Eye of the Heron’, ‘Golden Witchbreed’ and ‘Ancient Light’ (damn you Mary Gentle!) and ‘Woman at the End of Time’, for example, were never easy reading but neither have they disappeared into the morass of ‘books that I have read but can’t clearly recall’. A couple of days in Blackpool with no useful internet connectivity has forced me to get half way through Blueheart. An evening in Reading may well complete it. I’m hoping the denouement will be meaningful without being too searing. I hope Rache, Lisel Teal and Cybele all survive.

What happened to Alison Sinclair anyway? Two excellent SF novels (Legacies and Blueheart), a less stellar book (Cavalcade), a joint SF then three fantasy novels. Why do women end up writing fantasy? Lack of recognition? Lack of sales? I’ll have a look at the new stuff. Perhaps it’s as fab as the SF?

I say farewell to my hopes and dreams

I cried today. I never thought I’d see this; a turning away from our outward urge. From Apollo 8 to this final flight of the Endeavour, I have followed our space exploration for years. In real terms Endeavour has not been the end. The end probably happened years ago when we decided that space exploration should give way to delivery runs to our global communications system. And exploration into space may well continue; reaching out to the future will pass to the developing world, to China and India. It has probably been a mistake to identify our access to space with NASA and the American push.

I sort of assumed I would spend my twenties and thirties in Luna City, moving out to the asteroid belt as my children, Jack and Selene, became independent and moved towards their own entrance into space. Seconds would have become true metric units as I thought in kiloseconds, megaseconds, gigaseconds, divorced from the constraints of planetary life.

Sigh.

When did my dream disappear? Did Star Wars do it?  Maybe. We seemed to become so embedded in our make believe that the reality of the careful, hugely expensive, preparations for each tiny step seemed silly and petty. In my mind’s eye I have journeyed out, swung around the astonishing rings of Saturn, plunged into the cold depths of interstellar space, walked on strange new worlds, gloried in communication with mysterious and beautiful aliens. Except we didn’t and haven’t and now we’re not even moving towards that vision. Why plod through the endless expensive tedium when cgi lets us believe we are the gods themselves?

Perhaps it’s for the best. Potentially we could squander all the wealth of our beautiful world on finally getting out to a cold and sterile place where we lament our loss; a world destroyed by our efforts to escape from it, a paradise where, if we had stayed, we might have flourished in serene joy. What we seem to have achieved is both less and more tragic than that. We have neither seeded the planets and stars nor relaxed into an eco-paradise. We’ve wasted our opportunities and our wealth on producing vast quantities of ugly trash in which we are slowly sinking. Damn! We are a pedestrian race who neither reach for the stars nor build something fine here on Earth. No wonder I weep.

Going Out

I’ve been out for two evenings this week and they’ve both been enlightening and, to different extents, quite entertaining. The first, surprisingly fascinating, was an hour and a half in Lecture Theatre Two in the University of Sheffield’s Hicks Building where One, The Global Poverty Project and Christian Aid presented the case for combating extreme poverty. I hadn’t realised what good progress had been made but I’m well aware of some of the things that still stand in the way. Corruption, inequality, ill health due to malnutrition and preventable diseases, lack of adequate sanitation, rising food and fuel prices and climate change. Many of these issues are ones where we in the developed world are implicated. We accept and sometime encourage corruption because a corrupt government is easier for us to manipulate. We, or at least the richest among us, are the ones benefiting from speculation in commodities, we are the ones primarily causing climate change. We watched the Living Proof roadshow which is full of inspiring stories of what has been achieved so far, then we each sat and wrote a letter to our MP asking them to support the call for investment in diarrhoea and pneumonia vaccinations, major killers of children throughout the world.

My second big evening out was at the EICC in Edinburgh where we saw Monkeys Uncaged. What a fabulous evening! Robin Ince is my hero, both a marvellous (grumpy old) comic and a relentless populariser of science and clear thinking, here holding together a wonderful show comprising entertainment and important insights into the way the world works.

He presented the irresistibly enthusiastic Helen Keen who gave a shortened version of the show we saw at the Fringe some years ago, ‘It Is Rocket Science’, sadly without the puppet show splendid props.

From Helen to Ben Goldacre who was relentlessly entertaining at top speed about the design of clinical trials for drugs. You can get a flavour of his work by reading the Bad Science Blog but for the full-on authentic experience you really should listen to him talk.

The next ‘act’ and the one I was looking forward to least was Professor Brian Cox. I will confess to having a quite pronounced prejudice against his TV programmes. I will not suggest that he doesn’t know his stuff; he seems very knowledgeable. It’s probably more that I don’t like today’s style of science programme, which seems to assume we are all stupid with the attention span ascribed to goldfish. It irritates me so much that I can’t watch. And then the heroic poses; against a lonely seascape, against a range of mountains, against the desolation of a desert, hair blowing, nobly gaze into the distance; make me mildly nauseous. Well this evening was a revelation. Not only is the man amusing and self-deprecating, he has a talent for explaining difficult things clearly without either patronising or sinking into dullness. I was completely won over.

After the break Helen Arney graced the stage with her ukulele and a couple of lovely songs about sex. We really ought to see more of her. She’s bright and funny and produces great songs. Lets make love like animals. Well perhaps not like Angler Fish. I’d sort of not like a pair of genitals left attached to my body for me to use later.

Simon Singh was dependably interesting, with an understandable description of the Doppler effect, a sodium emitting gherkin and proof of the Big Bang. Even though I’d seen the talk before it was worth listening to again.

Perhaps the nicest thing about the evening, along with the gustatory brilliance of the Home Bistro, was the feeling of being part of a crowd of people getting their kicks from learning from and being entertained by some very bright people. I just wish a similar number of people had been drawn to Thursday’s discussion of ending extreme poverty.

Some more thoughts on banks

I mentioned my bank issues in Journey Planet really as a prelude to an appalling pun, however, it’s something that I want to return to after the Global Poverty project I’ve participated in recently.

To put it in context, although I grumble a lot I don’t usually move away from any provider. A mixture of inertia and loyalty. I have used two clearing banks in my life. My father worked for Midland Bank and so I banked with them until I got married, even when they heartlessly made him redundant. I only moved to my current bank because David, my husband, pointed out that if we ever needed to borrow money we would be better asking a bank with which we had a good credit record. I’d had a permanent overdraft with Midland. Until we married David had never been in debt with his bank. So, I closed my Midland account and we had a joint account with Barclays Bank.

I would never have chosen Barclays. The apartheid protests lingered in my awareness but David made a good point and at the time Barclays had divested themselves of the offending interests. So, we had a joint account and I settled into an apathetic relationship with Barclays.

Twenty three years later I am thinking again. I have always found the telephone ‘support’ from Barclays irritating. Some years ago I considered dumping the bank because of their Hard Sell but the branch staff in Kidderminster were really lovely and provided me with a direct dial so I didn’t have to go through the call centre. They told me at the time that they shouldn’t do this but many of their customers had the same problem and so, in order to keep some semblance of personal banking, they were ignoring the dictat.

My dissatisfaction has grown recently. About a year ago someone from Barclays phoned me up at work, ostensibly to check my payments, but actually to try to sell me cheaper house insurance. It wasted half an hour of my time that I then had to make up at the end of the day. Silly things started to irritate me. I now no longer visit a branch; all transactions are online, so there is never a personable teller to interact with, just an impersonal screen. In some ways I like this, but it means I have no loyalty, and the stupid tricks they play really annoy me. The ‘next’ button on each page is always below the visible window. The obvious button, which I occasionally click on inadvertently, is usually to a sales pitch – update your account to one that gives you useless ‘benefits’ and costs more, for example.

So, over recent years, some irritation. I suspect that this would be the case whichever bank I was with. As is regularly pointed out, they are businesses and they need to expand their business all the time (which is a rant for another time) but I am resistant to being sold to when I have no need and I resent having my time wasted, either online or by telephone sales calls.

What finally tipped the balance, some time on from the banking crisis, was Bob Diamond’s bonus, the pitiful amount of corporation tax paid and the news that Barclays is implicated in the further commoditisation of food via agricultural speculation using collateralised commodity obligations. For those living in extreme poverty, increasing food prices driven by financial speculation means starvation. Generally the people benefitting from food speculation have never been hungry in their lives, have never felt concern about their children suffering from malnutrition, have probably never thought of the consequences of one more financial bet. Barclays Capital are just the provider of this ‘service’ but the banks lobbied very hard for deregulation of the commodities markets to make this type of transaction possible and Barclays is the UK’s biggest player in the food commodities market, one of the big three in the world. I don’t want any part in supporting an organisation that is doing this. I am not under any illusion that taking my monthly pay packet away from them is going to make the least bit of difference to Barclays but I am moving my money to a mutual building society where I’m fairly sure my money will be supporting more benign projects.

Day five

It’s the last day and I’ve just eaten my last meal of the five days (chick pea and lovage omelette). I have 300g barley, about 25g quinoa and a dusting of porridge oats left together with 40p. It’s Friday and I really, really want a glass of wine.

It’s been an interesting week. It has been an enlightening experience and the cause of many conversations but I haven’t spent so much time thinking, and talking, about food since I was a dieting teen. I have never been desperately hungry but there has definitely been a peckishness; a desire to eat more, and more varied foods, than I had available. On the other hand I feel quite well. No coffee, tea, wine or sugar, no bread and very reduced amounts of dairy food have left me feeling better than usual. A more equitable sharing of resources would probably benefit the rich world as well as lifting 1.4 billion out of a level of poverty that this week has only given a vague glimpse of.  

Finally I’d like to thank everyone who has (or will) donate money. I really appreciate it.  

Day four

A whole banana with breakfast this morning. It felt like luxury. For lunch I cooked a cup of quinoa, mixed in chick peas, olive oil and mint from my depleting pot and divided it up for Sally to eat at home (there was a strike at college) and me to take to work. It was surprisingly delicious and very filling but, as I was running a course with lunch provided, I had to explain to the delegates why I was eating this when they were tucking into exotic sarnies and several varieties of cake. The course was about sustainability and, whilst talking about resource issues we’d discussed escalating food prices and their effects on the developing world so it was an interesting talking point. Tonight I used up all the vegetables bar one onion in a soup, which I’ll liquidise for tomorrow’s lunch. I was a bit appalled to find two of my remaining three carrots had gone manky. I salvaged what I could rather than flinging the lot. 

Only one more day!

Live Below the Line, Day Three

Today has been a hunger free day! Before setting off for work I simmered a handful of barley grains, threw in some chopped kale from the back garden and added it to my left over stew to make a fairly decent quantity. I cycled into work again along the canal. It was lovely and I paused to take a few photos. Breakfast was porridge and ½ a banana again with a dash of milk.

I had half a bowl of stew at noon and another half at 2pm. I’ve found that spreading the meal reduces the hunger and gives me something to look forward to.
Cycling back along the Five Weirs Walk, towards the end I was definitely flagging. Also, whilst I adore my bike, the saddle is not comfortable. Tomorrow I’m running a course so I’ll bike down to the station and catch a train in an attempt to arrive feeling less jounced about.

Once home, as it is half way through the five days we had a treat. It’s a meal I used to cook all the time when the kids were little and the Rayburn was always hot. Savoury oat bake is from Rose Elliot’s fab book, ‘Cheap and Easy’, and consists of porridge oats, a tin of tomatoes and 100g grated cheese, layered and baked. Total prep time five minutes, baking time 30 minutes. Comfort food of the best sort, being both cheap and yummy.

Anyway, enough of this thinking about food. I need to read a paper about resource efficiency and then go to sleep. 


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