Too Much To Declare

Peace, love and arsenic.

Certainly not many daffodils this time.

Parting from mum.

Saturday, so I spend the day with her (see countless other posts for details). A good, mainly positive time. I'm out for almost two hours doing her shopping and stuff.

But then it's time for me to go - a couple of hours before the jolly relief nurse/helper arrives. The second I mention my departure, my mum's face contorts ugly. "I don't want any more of this," she snaps, handing me back the Dutchy Original Soup as if I'd peed in it.

She tries to recover and be "brave". She passes me the TV schedule and I feel guilty that there is nothing on the main channel she'd like at 6.30 on a Saturday evening. (The guilt subsides fast).

Her sister rings up. She tells her (quite rudely) that she'll ring back when I've gone "if she can find the number". I find the number for her, but that's not she means - she wants a preset, which has stopped working on her phone. She's sulking. I write down "1271 3" and explain what to do. Her face has that expression of defiant panic that she adopts with questions of technology or money...

I know she is very old, and I should (and do) make allowances. But the worst thing of all is that her expressions of panic and pain and attempts at "bravery" are so similar to her expressions over 50 years ago when I was about to leave (with her agreement and my protest) for a term at boarding school.

The painful is familiar. Familiar, like a comfort blanket.

I have banging my head against that wall so long, it's become part of the rythmn of my life.

Misery can be a noble addiction, in the right self-serving fantasy.

Wake up and smell the coffee! If only it was that time in the morning already...

(notes to myself during a long period awake one night)

On the other hand, most likely all I need to do is cry and cry.

All?! If it were that easy I wouldn't have got into this 8-year mess in the first place.

So hard to cry.

Sometimes I'm so overwhelmed by what I want to say here, that the words and thoughts and emotions get too jumbled up inside for me to say anything at all.

So today - although it some respects it's been a busy, happy day for me - has been deeply frustrating. The story I want to tell has been busting out all over - too long for a blogpost, too intense to explain, too close in time for comfort or perspective.

Besides, I'm afraid if I write the truth it will cease to be true.

Remind me, next time I'm arrested as a murder suspect, not to turn cartwheels at the police station.

(allegedly)

I there ever were more suitable candidates than bankers to give back to the community what they have siezed through greed, it's hard to imagine who they would be.

Highly rewarded Banking Executives should immediately be put to work repairing Britain's broken infrastructure and cleaning its loos.

And all those escallators that are so long out of service on the London underground. Most tube stations have locked rooms at platform level which could be used as dormitories for the financial wizards when they took there four hour breaks.

This post needs an illustration from someone more graphically competent than me. Any offers?

Anyway, forget the diamonds and not having anywhere to hang a handbag......

at last, with one bound I AM FREE!

Yeah. Angry, but happy and free.

Far too early to explain or to be 103% certain.

But certainly not too early to celebrate.

I am not, I promise, making this up:

This evening I went into a newly opened shop off Bond Street, W1, which specialises in selling diamond studded, silver or gold plated clips which are designed to fit on to the edge of tables so that you can hang your handbag from them.

I say "you". You or your husband/lover would have to part with between £1700 and £3000 to purchase one of these exquisite products.

Or you could send the money to me, and merely imagine you owned one of these clips, which look strangely like a garden mole. Just imagining would also save on insurance.

And what was I doing in the shop? Well, I suppose I needed something to blog about.

I h8t sndng txts.

My fingers are too big.

Or maybe - to quote my favourite Who song, I'm just backdated. Yeah?

There could be something wrong with my DNA. My TV gene has gone missing.

After months of can't-be-damned, I made a big effort to watch earlier, but I couldn't stick at it. Ever since I gave up smoking dope every evening, TV just doesn't hold my attention. Thought it was time I tried again.

I watched the end of something about TV chefs (yawn), then a bit of a film on BBC4 which was jolly but with explosions and annoying, then QI which was funny in theory but I didn't laugh. Channel 5 - what was on it? Then back to Newsnight for about a minute but I prefered to type this instead.

Perhaps I should start getting stoned again so I can appreciate TV more.

Had to skim through my novel again today, in order to pick out a few choice sentences and phrases to use on the book's about-to-be launched website.

The script has been subedited by a professional, yet there are still a few tiny things I came across today that I would like to change - a couple of typos (eg 'he' instead of 'her') and a few word repeats and awkward phrasing. Damn! It mean I will have to go through the 'publisher's copy' (already in the chosen font and page size) with care and patience before releasing it on the world.

I hate being a pedant. But, much more, I hate other people things pointing out mistakes I could have spotted myself.

Today I discovered a sweater I'd forgotten I had, in a wardrobe drawer I had forgotten existed.

Really quite a nice sweater. And another one beside it, not bad at all...

What is it with me and sweaters? My mother gave me one for Christmas this year... last year... She notices, every time i see her, I usually wear the same one.

With me and sweaters it's always Groundhog sweater day.

(A Nasty Voice writes) Maybe they'll fit you now, but before you losy weight you looked like a clothed over elephant.

(a nicer, more supportive, feminine voice retorts) It depended which mirror you loked in.

I will never win an Oscar, this side of my next incarnation.

On the other hand, I will never have to smile when I lose.

I just can't stop eating ice cream

and to hell with the diet.

(all sorts of more interesting things are happening to me at the moment, but I dont want to tell you about them)

Or how to annoy people on the London train, especially if I could magic them on to someone else's phone.

[imagining them was meant to send me asleep again; instead they have woken me up]

(Bill Clinton) I did not have sexual have relations with that woman.

(announcer) You have been evicted. Please leave the Big Brother House.

(G. Brown) No more boom and bust! No more boom and bust!

(bright, concerned mother) Your breath smelt a bit when you left the house, darling...

I have lost my pocket diary. Missing all today... and maybe all weekend, too.

Not in any of my pockets. Or in my briefcase thingy. Or my manbags... or on the floor, or any other flat surface I can find.

Where is it? Any suggestions?

Please help me.

When I returned to the Dry Cleaners today, the dapper young man (who, last week insisted I told him my title before accepting my clothes) took a very, very long time to find the three items I'd brought in - despite (this was a life first) me having kept the ticket.

"What did you stain them with? We were unable to get out all the marKs" he tells me with him now familiar disdain - although I hadn't noticed his Ks before.   Why didn't I take 10loves10's advice and shoot him last time?

Get out all the marks!! The two sweaters and the jeans look exactly the same as when as I brought them in - except they now had a blue label held on with a safety pin.  Why in heaven's name didn't I put them through the washing machine and to hell with what the labels say and the risk of shrinking?

"We will put them through again, at your own risK," he says. Stupidly I agree. I'm getting distracted by his way of over-prouncimg Ks - as if this made him more efficient...

...efficient? This guy is managing to hypnotise me! This is the worst dry cleaner in the universe yet his rudeness and his spitted Ks are convincing me it's all my fault for dirtying my clothes in the first place.

"Thursday after 4 o'clocK" he spits. They Ks are gettiing more vicious each time.  Why not say "four in the afternoon"?  It could be a sexual thing. I lacK the guts to say fucK off.

There's a guy in the bacK, with lots of clothes racKs - but no sight of machines. Perhaps they are a gay comedy duo, trying it on.

smother
mother
significant other

cauliflower

You can usually can't drive very fast along most streets in British cities. On average, it's probably quicker to walk. Never mind - they are great fun as free fire zones.

The aim is to hit or terrorise as many pedestrians as possible. There used to be rules, but even mounting the pavement to chace them has become fashionable recently.

Pedestrains should only be able to avoid your vehicle if they are supremely traffic aware and physically fit - or look as fragile and pathetic as possible.

Enjoy the drive!

I slept well, until seven thirty, instead of the more usual 3.55am. The day is grey; the day feels wonderful, though for the moment slightly blurred.

PS I seem to remember having a happy dream about my mother...

She loves me
I love her not
She loves me not
I quite like her
She is indifferent
I love her indifference
She loves her knot
I give her up
She loves me.

Stolen - and edited - from an anonymous blogpost in February 2005. Apparently the humour is unintentional.

How do you identify a blog addict? Perhaps he says he has other things he'd rather do than watch a movie with you on Friday night. Perhaps she sneaks off to the computer desk once she thinks you've fallen asleep. Perhaps he is bleery-eyed and unable to track when you talk to him about plans for next weekend. Perhaps she plays at you again and again with the tips of her fingers, as if trying to see if you are real.

The blogging addiction occurs for a variety of reasons. "I spend all day working at this computer - it's so lonely," one might say. "No one listens to me at home. At least someone out there in bloggerland is willing to read what I have to say," says another. Some may take to blogging simply for the pleasure of it, like recreational sex. For others it may fill a deep-seated need to "be somebody."

Whatever the cause in a particular case, the enablers are everywhere: Blogspot...(the writer, probably American, has never heard of BCUK). All of them are readily available at the click of a mouse, and some of them are free. Free like maybe the little bag of free sample your heroin dealer offered you at the beginning of that addiction.

You'll see that one who is tempted to blog starts by hanging out with bloggers (in a virtual sense) and soon enough gets sucked into the endless cycle of Post-and-Read-and-Post-and-Read. And soon enough, something that started out as an innocent and fun way to pass the time turns dark and ugly and begins to ruin a life - and not just the blogger's life, but the lives of those around him.

Unlike the heroin addiction, the cure for the blog addict is not necessarily total abstinence. Rather, as with many sexual addictions, the goal is to change the habit and the mind-set, so that the patient gains control of the activity, rather than allowing the activity to control him.

Is it hopeless? Not necessarily. The loved one of a blog addict needs to:

(1) Ensure that the blogger posts no more than once or twice a day.
(2) Aid him in reducing the number of blogs he reads - get it down to no more than fifty per day.
(3) Assist her in lessening the number of comments she leaves on other blogs to no more ten per day maximum.

These seem to be reasonable standards; anything more has the potential to become extreme and to push the addict out of control again.

It's some kind of super-interreactive Japanese office phone system. I know it is, because my dream is vivid. Then a Japanese guy holds up a coloured piece of paper. I need white paper Wanga, wanga! It's a fun card game!

But, awake, Uncle Google tells me Wanga is something to do with Haitian Voodoo, a dance like a samba - and maybe also a wood carving.  Voodoo dolls  No mention of high-tech, playing cards. Did you mean: wangan+Japan   This is doing my head in...

Wanga, wanga. The word own't leave me. Won't leave me.

Wanga. Cauliflower. Maybe I have finally flipped my lid. Off with the fairies. Drugless, but out of my tiny mind.

Wanga Crunch Cauliflower. With a name like that I could become a fifties jazz trombonist.

Oh, for crying out loud, Alec. Wake up and smell the decaffienated coffee.

Don't knock it.

One of the techniques the hypnotist tried to teach me last week was to relieve stress and obsession: squeeze a point point my left wrist, breathe deeply think of my favourite beautiful, peaceful place (eg a beach on a tropical island and say "Peace", out loud if possible. All a bit too nicey-nicey for me, 2b honest.

But after I had written my previous post, "Cauliflower Life" (and had managed to sleep another couple of hours - I did blog it circa 5am) I began to contemplate a different strategy.

So, later in the day, when my mother was causing me stress, I held the point on my wrist, took a deep in breath - and imagined a cauliflower similar to the one you see here.

I found this a great help. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with a comfortable sensation of meaninglessness. All my stresses and obsessions fell into context.

Of course, cauliflowers should never be overcooked.

Life, someone once confided to me, is like a cauliflower.

Quite why it resembles a cauliflower rather than, say, a fig or a turnip, I can't remember.

In fact, thinking about it now, the life/cauliflower comparison seems at the best, distinctly limited.

For instance, I can't imagine Lisa Minelli singing: "Life is a Cauliflower, old chum." Can you?

Still, it sticks in the memory. Cauliflower Life.

I cancelled my planned appointments with the hypnotist I saw on Monday - the one who "looked at my blog" ie one post about coffee and promised threatened a more thorough examination.

He was all smooth caring and supercharged NLP. My objections to Neuro Lingistic Programming would fill several hard-to-read blogposts and possibly a major TV series.

Suffice to tell you I'm proud of my neuroses, and enjoy exploring them in a creative, FreudoJungian way.

Anyway, said self-named Mind Doctor sent me an email acknowledging my cancellation message and wishing me "good luck on your journey."

My journey to death, he means. The journey to Hell, Heaven or realistically Zero. We're all on that journey; what matters is whether we have fun - and respite from preachers - along the way.

"So glad I found you. Not many dry cleaners in Brighton, are there."

Daperly dressed young dry cleaning service operative (DDYDCSO): (Glares)

"I've got three items here"

DDYDCSO (with disdain): "What caused these marks?"

"Well, they're not very serious... not coffee or fat..."

DDYDCSO: "We need to know." He checks the cleaning instructions on said items, and reluctantly concludes that dry cleaning is appropriate for them. "Address?" He looks at me, hostile.

I'm beginning to imagine I have been caught going through the Green Route at customs, carrying a load of cocaine. I tell him my address, phone number...

DDYDCSO: "Name and first initial?"

"Weston. Alec Weston."

DDYDCSO: "A. Weston." I looks down on his pad as if it's a charge sheet. "Title?" he asks.

"Take a wild guess," I suggest, suddenly belligerant.

"Doctor, Professor," he explains, as if to a dimwit.

Why hadn't I thought of saying Professor? He would still have treated me like caca. What with his immaculately pressed suit, bow tie and barely 20 years on this planet - if he really is here.

"I don't really think my title matters that much," I suggest "with dry cleaning."

Reluctantly, the daperly dressed young dry cleaning service operative gives me a docket and lets me leave his little microworld.

With the shimmering new Samsung Tedia OF series, you can jump ahead of the pack to the first post touch screen generation mobile device ever - and choose any colour you like with amazing, newly pioneered Camelian Paint Technology from Ramsajan Dulux.

Post Touch Screen (PoTo) means the Samsung Tedia will dial or store the number you are thinking without you ever having to say it aloud! The PoTo Satnav not only knows where you are, but where you want to go. PoTo will even borrow money for you, long before you've decided you need it! (subject to bank solvency). And a special add on from the Apps store will locate a local dealer for your drug of choice.

Impossible? Of course it's impossible. But you know you want to believe it.

I think in some strange, secret, instantly deniable way, I have always thought of life as one huge cryptic crossword puzzle.

When we die, waiting in St Peter's lobby before entering heaven (hell is for pessimists) we get given the solution to the clues:

Yes, she did love you, but she found out about your affair with B, and never trusted you after that.

If you'd ever finished the washing up and tidied the kitchen, things might have been different.

But life ain't like that. There's never a solution.

Can be fun, though. My earleir model didn't really allow for that.

The woman who was about to design the website for my novel, Low Life Games, has decided she can't undertake the project at the last minute.

Her 15 word email twice included the word "novel" in inverted commas, as if she were holding the book with tongs and self-righteous disdain.

I'd sent her a copy of the cover and blurb which describes Low Life Games as erotic fiction. Obviously she'd decided - without meeting me asking any questions - that the novel is pornographic.

Well, if you will excuse the obscene metaphor, screw her. I am not a pornographer and if some poxy young internet "consultant" wants to imagine otherwise, that's her problem.

My cover designer friend and I are going to have to learn some new web skills and put the site together on our own. Optimising for google, and going for the right links made me hard work - anyone got any tips? - but it will be fun to have total control

You've got to admit it's getting better (Better)

Well, not really. I mean, besides anything else, there's the credit crunch..

Hush. A little better all the time.

This hypnosis - it just isn't working.

Give it a chance. Give your life a chance. Give Optimistic Alec a chance. Now, breathe-in-slowly. (It can't get more worse)

Excuse me?

It's in the original Beatles lyrics. The chorus. Now breathe out-out-very-slowly. Imagine a beach with white sand... Peace and calm. Now b-r-e-a-t-h-e in again as as you breathe out again say out loud. "I have to admit it's getting better (Better)"

I remember this. The next line is "It's getting better since you've been mine" and nobody's mine at the moment. It's an illusion. Love is an illusion.

Peaceandcalm. Let go of your self pity.

Yeah, right.

Getting so much better all the time
It's getting better all the time
Better, better, better
It's getting better all the time
Better, better, better.
Times up. I'm afraid I don't take credit cards.

Plenty of talent but a big, big, mess.

I need a manager.

Psychophants OR cynics should not apply.

I left my wallet at my mother's last Saturday. It's been a challenge to do without it. Today I am making an unusual midweek visit to take her to the optician, so I'll be able to collect it.

There are boring reasons why I left the wallet there. In a court of law I could make my mistake seem perfectly understandable. But my mother told me on the phone "you are becoming quite the absentminded professor."

This has upset me like practically no other of her inadvertent comments. Or anyone else's.

Why? I can't find my annual mortgage statement, which arrived last week. In the search for it, I discovered a building society account I'd forgotten about. And... What was I going to say?

Well, maybe I don't like being called an absentminded professor because it's more or less true. At any rate at this time in the morning.

I am silent

You are speechless

She is tongue-tied

They are dumb

Firstly by happenstance, and then by design, my "real" friends, contacts and family don't read this blog. Mostly, they are not aware it exists.

As a consequence, with the small precaution of changing/not mentioning names I can say pretty well much what I like about anyone I know here without causing offence or retaliation.

But today I broke my rule without thinking. I gave the address of this site to the hypnotist I saw today (googled only yesterday) and between my early afternoon free introuctory session and the late afternoon hypnotism he's checked out Too Much to Declare - and intends to return.

Actually, the second session wasn't hypnotism at all, but I feel inhibited from writing about it - and my present doubts about the man's whole approach - because of the danger of this post, this blog turning into a feedback loop howl. As it were.

The week before last, a Russian and a US satellite collided in outer space - and debris has apparently been falling in Kansas, although it could have been paranoia or an UFO.

Today, it's reported British and French submarines have collided in the Arctic. Nuclear submarines. Tra, la, la. No need, we're told for alarm.

Hmm. Are these signs of the time? There'd be no need to solve the credit crunch if we are all about to face Armaggedon.

Awake again

Still jangling.

Five hours sleep, now back to High Anxiety.

Damn. Had too much coffee today and it's jangling my nerves. Brrrrrrw. In full freaked out, anxiety mode as soon as I turn my bedroom light off. Won't be able to sleep for hours.

fucking precarious

Went for a walk on the Downs today. Best walk for months. More energy ahan I've had since I moved here 50 weeks ago.

And yet...and yet... I spent most of the walk obsessing about my mother

I must not take life so seriously. I must not take life so seriously. I must not take life so seriously. I must not take life so seriously. I must not take life so seriously I must not take life so seriously

I'm thinking of having hypnosis. As far as I can tell from the entries on google, Brighton is the Hypnonosis capital of the UK

Blah, blah, sure there's "another country". White and southern English and ruling the waves and the wogs, and debtless. No shame, no socialism. You'd like to vow your allegiance to that would you? An Officer Class Britain, servants serving, caps doffed, with every woman a Wife, or Widowed or in a Madhouse...

I vow to thee my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love.
Arthur Spring Rice has a lot to answer for. Still, he had the grace to drop dead after writing it

My mother - as you may be getting tired of me telling you - is bored and lonely. She can barely read or watch TV any more. Most of her friends are dead or moved away.

"If you ever did go into a Home" my sister, bolder than usual, told her the other day, "you would be able to get to know some of the other residents."

"Oh, but I wouldn't talk to any of them, dear," my mum repied, in her explaining-the-obvious voice.

So for my sister and I, it's until death doth part us from her. Some of the time, mum seems determined not to be the one that goes first...

On reflection, I think my last previous post sounds like the beginning of a song:

Lace, garters and supenders don't turn me on at all,
I'm really not into women's underwear.

But, I'd rather write the next lines myself, rather than rely on sarky Comments.

Lace, garters and supenders don't turn me on at all.

I'm really not into women's underwear.

I'd forgotten all about it.

But somewhere behind my forehead, abovr my left eye there is a small room with a dirty white door which I can see for the first time in years. The wall has fallen down that used to hide it.

"Number 44b12" it says on the door, but that may be meaningless. I have no idea where the key is. The door could be bolted from the inside.

I'm going to have to break it down to get inside, but perhaps it's best to leave the rooom well alone. Frankly, I'm scared.

The room behind my forehead is full of stuff. Now I remember the room I know it's stuffed full. Toys, perhaps old clothes smelling, but mainly lies. Trunks full of bullying and lies.

Why should I open it? Really, why bother? From under the door I can smell rotting flesh, but you can't smell it, can you? I might as well leave it there.

Months ago I reported here that I got on a bus called Graham Greene, and then began to notice that all double decker buses in BrightonandHove were named after a celebrity or dignatory who had a local connection.

There are lots of buses. Some of the names are not even famous on their own bus route. "Councillor Norman Temkins..." You get the picture.

But yesterday I saw one named after one of my ex-lovers. Before her early death, she was quite a famous newsreader, who used to live in Brighton.

I say ex-lover. We had a flirtation and a one night stand.

I say one night stand but nothing passionate happened. By her insistence, or mutual agreement...

On the other hand, she later told my TV journalist sister that something did happen and we'd had an affair.

And there she is, commemerated on the front of a bus I just missed.

Life is exciting down here.

= making a wicker basket destined to be unwoven.

(these words have been recycled, too)

I couldn't care less about Dagenham - or Guus Hiddink, for that matter. Or Crawley. Or Morrisons' Wensleydale Cheese.

It keeps me awake with all sorts of put-downs and hurtful insults. It pulls me from rose tinted dreams and makes me feel useless, doomed, mediocre, deluded, a groundless optimist. The worst thing it says is

You are just like your father

Following my short post yesterday, comparing the sorry current state of bankers with large snakes, here is some analysis of how sorry they really were in the House of Commons, by the Guardian's Oliver James:

'...More intriguing were Lord Dennis Stevenson and Andrew Hornby, the HBOS team. In making their apologies, both referred to being sorry at "the turn of events". They had not done anything wrong, were innocent victims of "events". While Hornby - who seems to have lost more money than the others - did look pretty shellshocked (which is not the same thing as contrite), Stevenson was a gripping exercise in patrician detachment...

He has always made a big point of stressing his personal probity and of condemning lack thereof in others.

How strikingly suspect, then, were the precise words with which he couched his apology: "We are profoundly, and, I think I would say, unreservedly, sorry at the turn of events." After the words "we are" and during the word "profoundly", his body experienced an extraordinary swerve from the shoulders, like a rugby player trying to dummy a pass. It was as if he was not at all comfortable delivering the words, was, indeed, making a feint.

His lack of authenticity was exposed by his use of the words "I think I would probably say" before "unreservedly apologise". Think? Probably? Good grief man, how could you possibly only "think" that "probably" you are sorry about a balls-up of such a catastrophic scale, one that may even have ruined your business career? One does not make qualifications about something one feels unreservedly.

But then I think it is probably not surprising that these men are so disconnected from the realities of shame and guilt. The definitive study of senior business managers found they were more likely to suffer from several personality disorders, such as narcissism, than inmates at a secure mental hospital'.

a good snarl comes from the inside. Don't even think about the face youre pulling, if you're screwing up your nose enough etc. Don't try and imitate Elvis, either. Just breathe deeply and access your Inner Snarl. Doesn't that feel better?

Maybe not. We've all got our own individual Inner Snarls - but not everybody has the courage to admit it.

I have said it before, I think: every time I see mum, she seems to be smaller.

Her voice, too. Today, on the phone to me, it kept cracking, like the opposite of an adolescent boy's.

She is so pathetically grateful when I phone. Her eyes are too strained to watch television or read much more than the headlines. Her hearing worse than ever.

Most of her old local friends are dead, moved away (he never phones them), or fed up with her relentless pessimism. Her sister does phone all the time, but lives faraway in Leeds. My mum regards her own nurse/helper with suspicion and envy. Frankly, my sister and I are all she lives for. But she is determined to go on living.

More than ever, I am the only man in her life.

How sweet of them.
Touching, how ready they have been to apologise to a House of Commons Committee - and by proxy to us all.

•

A fat coiled snake said Sorry for swallowing defenceless animals whole.

I hate it. Relentless, viciously cold at the moment. Yet if there's a dry summer no doubt we'll be told the resevoirs are empty.

So far as I can tell, however, the scientists (ha, ha)making the rain in this putative technology come from France and Switzerland:

We’ve heard about energy harvested from the footfalls of pedestrians. We’ve heard about backpacks that store the energy expended by its carrier. We’ve even seen, back in 1984, the expansions and contractions of a dog’s rib cage harvested as vibrational energy. So what’s the next frontier in obscure sources of energy? It turns out its raindrops.

Scientists from Europe’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), in Grenoble, France, have found a way to recover the vibrational energy from a falling raindrop using a piezoelectric material, which can translate a mechanical force into electric energy. The French scientists examined raindrops that range in diameter from 1 millimeter (drizzle) to 5 millimeters (downpour), and the group’s simulations suggest that it’s possible to collect up to 12 milliwatts of instantaneous power from one large drop. The hope is that strips of the material, in the right settings, could provide the energy needed to power numerous kinds of sensors.

Traditionally, the quantities of energy collected through a piezoelectric material are far too small to be of use to an electronic device, which is why researchers studying environmental sensors are also looking into ways to store the energy in a battery or capacitor until enough energy has accumulated to power a device.

The other problem with using rain as an energy source is, naturally, the intermittent behavior of Mother Nature. Presumably, a sensor’s utility is limited if it only works in a downpour. That’s why it makes more sense for a rain-based energy-harvesting technique to supplement something else—say, a small solar panel.

Tonight I feel like raiding my own archives; a post from September 2007

Once upon a time, I was very young.  You could only buy things if you had a coupon left in your Ration Book.  And Mummy and Daddy still lived together.

Daddy had an uncle who lived in New York.  Uncle Sydney

Every so often he sent me some comics, all rolled up.  Sometimes they were frightening and printed on bad newspaper.  I didn't like these, though I tried to.  But sometimes he sent ones with shiney covers about characters I really liked, especially Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny.  They made me laugh and smile.

"Why does Sydney bother to send comics if he doesn't roll up a pair of nylons with them?" mummy complained - though rolling up nylons with the comics was Smuggling and Illegal.  About half the time Uncle Sydney sent nylons and half the time he didn't.  My mum didn't notice the difference between the nasty, newspaper comics and the nice, funny, ones with proper colours.  The nylons were all that mattered to her, because silk stockings were always getting Ladders

"I like Bugs Bunny," I told my mum.  But perhaps she was going deaf already.

Her Disappointment was bigger than mine,'cos she was my mum.  It wasn't fair, because Uncle Sydney wasn't even her uncle.

Believe it or not, I once won a BAFTA.

Okay, it was a Scottish BAFTA - but Scottish BAFTA is fully affiliated to BAFTA in London.

My BAFTA was for documentary I made about three artists in Orkney, which was later broadcast on Channel 4.

This happened in 1985 or 6. I forgot all about it for years - until today.

I never have been, will be, or have had a desire to be President Bill Clinton.

Or, for that matter, Hilary Clinton, either.

A new word has appeared on my Keyword list. (Not yet as popular as the keyphrase world's longest fart - answer 2.30 seconds to save you looking it up)

The new word is Anhodenia.

Although I'd forgotten, several months ago I had included it in a post about bionic aids to sexual enjoyment - and ackowledged steal from the `American site "The Daily Beast", which in turn ripped it from the Daily Telegraph.

"Anhodenia" is mentioned in the article. It means resistence to pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure. Apparently, some of the British subjects of the experiment found the heightened sexual desire uncomfortable.

Anyway, at the moment, if you gooogle "Anhodenia", you get my post at the top of the list of 72 references on the www.

And neither the Daily Beast or the Daily Telegraph articles are anywhere to be seen.

So, a rather sad kind of micro-fame.

"It's that new cleaner, she's hopeless. What drives me mad, more than anything else in the world is not being able to find the black pepper grinder in my own kitchen."

Aunti Alison has lived rather a sheltered life.

and then, beyond the vacant shop lots and oblivious banks (see previous post) further along Western Road is my favourite shop in Brighton, Taj the Grocers.

After all the sense of devastation, failure and pessimism, here is a shop that restores faith in happy day-to-day living. The food is cheap and looks good... I want to buy herbs and vegetables I have never seen before without knowing their names or how to cook them. Even the tin food looks... desirable. I have never once being tempted to visit the Waitrose opposite.

It is to fun to shop here - and 'fun' isn't a sentiment I often assocaite with shopping these days. The smells, the serendipity, the music, the staff's shy smiles remember me of an Asian souk.

So maybe we're not all doomed. At the risk of seeming a sentimental old orientalist, maybe we can pull ourselves from the current crisis in capitalism by looking along to the western end of Brighton's Western Road - to the east.

The sun is out, but it's not freezing. Daringly, spring is bursting out here.

But, crunch, crunch. One by one the shops on Brighton's Western are falling, like abscess ridden teeth in a once near perfect mouth. Gaps, gaps - and then a bank left standing. More gaps - a Superdrug still trading - and then another bank. More gaps follow, and shoe shop on its Last Days sale.

Both banks (HSBC, RBS nee NatWest) built in the thirties (fourties, fifties?) to look a bit like temples - the standard high street design - revealed now to what in essense they always were - gorgons of our capitalist religion eating all they need to survive, spewing out the entrails of the lesser businesses around them who stupidly took the banks at their word and borrowed lots of money.

In a different society, we would be rioting outside these temples, hanging the manager from a lamppost, burning the places down.

But of course, the local manager has long me early-retired, replaced partly by a undertrained clerk, partly by a stock option millionaire, and partly by computer software, now including a risk aversion module.

Besides, lets face it, we need out gorgon banks, still someone produces a vision, a blueprint for a different future. For the moment, we still need our fix. We are all junkies.

Today I wrote three or four long, profound but amusing posts in my head. Unfortunately there's no internet connection.

Perhaps the reason I wake up at 4am most mornings and am unable to sleep again is that I'm trying to avoid having a particularly nasty dream.

What dream? How do I know, if I always wake up.

the spectre at the party
the voice under the pillow
howling feedback
howling woolf
fire
freezing
fear as fashion
fear of the dark, of nothingness, of nothing
fear of smothering
fear of the pillow
fear of drowning
fear of rage
fear of pain
fear of failure, of success,
fear of intimacy
fear of loss
fear of gulag, of goulash, of gouls
fear of emptyness
fear of
fear of chess

Before leaving the subject of my birthday for another year, I'd like to tell you my sister's attitude.

She phones back after leaving a message about our mother on my answerphone and says "I forgot to say the two unmentionable words, which I'm sure you don't want to hear..." Then she doesn't say them.

My sister, three and half younger than me, has had this - disaste for ackowledging she's growing older - well, at least since her 25th birthday, when we held a joint party, partly to acknoweldge the "end of her youth" (her young years, not the demise of a lover).

To me, a birthday - however unwelcome anno domino-wise - is to chance to have a flagrant celebration of life and my ego. A "me" day.

None of us can stop the clock ticking - but that goes for 365 days a year. It is so sad, sis cannot feel able to enjoy being herself on an anniversary day or any other time.

Meanwhile, I have just found a CD on my shelves I have never played: Salif Keita: Moffou. His voice makes my soul dance. When I've fisinshed writing this, I'll let the rest of my body join in.

Earlier in the week, I mentioned it was the thirteenth anniversary of my dad dying.

Last night, he died again. This time I watched; he died in a corridor on a hospital trolly.... Coming round to consciousness, I thought: It was meant to be my mother.

Yes, disturbing.

...so I'm definitely not going to be doing the washing up this morning, but I have taken care to wear matching socks.

Many Happy Returns to Me!

A friend is going to paint a water colour portrait of me for my new website. I feel chuffed.

Also it avoids having to choose a photograph.

Eugh! How can that be allowed?

Ridiculous.

Yet, every day of the week...

I'm speechless.

I am going to launch a new Currency called the Crunch. Anyone, anywhere with access to a photocopier can have as many Crunches as they like as long as they spend a whole load of the stuff, hopefully on exciting trivia.

Well, it can't be a worse solution to what's being done at the moment, and it could be fun.

Perhaps someone could design one for me.

Then again, maybe the point of life is to sleep... to dream of a city built of fat-free chocolate, on the banks of a river flowing with yoghurt and honey... and I'm rowing a boat... with dreams like these, who needs a Hollywood ending..?

What is the point of it?

Seriously?

Our only function (which so far, as far as I can tell, I have evaded) is to reproduce -

- so our children, in their own time, can ask the same question:

What is the point of it?

The composer Felix Mendelson was born on 3rd February, 200 years ago today. One of the first classical LPs I ever owned was Mendelson's violin concerto.

This morning, when I learnt it was his 200th birthday, I shed a few, large tears. Then I remembered today is also the 13th anniversary of my dad's death.

Spent most of the morning writing the blurb, acknowledgements etc for Low life Games.

Per word, it took me about five times as long as producing a paragraph for the book itself.

I am not, never have been or will be Enid Blyton, Prince Rainier of Monaco, or the greek good Zeus.

Actually I didn't tell you I was in a bad mood, though you might have guessed.

It all started in the night, geting bad indigestion after a meal in a vegetarian restaurant. Appaently pumkin doesn't agree with me.

Anyway, at long last I fell into a deep sleep - and the phone rang.

It was barely after 7am. I sat bolt upright. Perhaps my mum had been taken ill in the night...

"Could I speak to Tim, please?" A bright, female voice, not a bit apologetic.

"Wrong number." I hope I snarled.

The nerve of it! Later I worked out "Tim" had to be not Henman, but Timothy Creep, one of the two guys who sold me the flat 11 months ago - moving on with no address or contact number.

Whatever. The shock woke me up for the duration. I cankered like a Grumy Old Man until about half an hour ago.

Tim!

This was meant to be the first day of the rest of my life again!

Am I the only one to feel fed up with the white weather already?

Nothing agains snow - if only UKBrit could continue to operate while it falls. But no one is their offices. Shops are closed, roads uncleared... the only place to be is in bed and I'm bored up with that, after so much convalescence.

Okay, Time Killer - once more, call me a miserable bastard. Any Comment will prove there's still life out there beyond the snowy silence.

So poor us in southern England, with all the snow. Or lucky us if you like that sort of thing and don't have to move very fast.

Can't tell from inside whether there's anyone left alive out there, or it is just that the snow is cotton-wooling all sounds. In the passageway out front, it is undisturbed by foot marks.

No newspaper, of course. I undertake an Expedition to Brighton station, 250 metres away, to buy a Guardian.

A few pedestrians, precariously balanced but most cheerfully chatting on their mobiles. It's just possible to walk up hill without slipping. Not so for cars - a couple abandoned at odd angles to the curb, one with a driver looking foolish.

Stil this eerie sense of muffled sound.

At the station, lots of people milling - but no buses, no taxis (usually there are too many for the parking), and the only train on the board is leaving in twenty five minutes - for Worthing and Portsmouth, where few people want to go.

Still, newspapers are on sale - they arrived two hours late. But, generally, it does look as if Nature is doing its own credit-crunching on southern English life.

Crunch, crunch - almost whoops! - crunch in the snow in the way home.

So few people blogging tonight - friends or strangers. Is it something to do with the snow..?

It is still snowing here, and it's settling on the pavements and on the sidestreets, even near the seafront, although when I went out I didn't get as far as the beach or the pier.

It's cold, of course, but warmer than for days - the wind has dropped, there's no clear sky, and the snow is gentle compared the recent spiteful rain.

It's so quiet - few people out and about, fewer cars, and the muffling effect of the snow. Italian waiters, outside their restaurant closed early, taking photographs of each other happy. Could be they have never seen proper snow before.

When I get back, above the muffled sounds, I hear - can it be? - fireworks. Maybe someone has been saving them up for an occasion like this. Or it's a regular ritual to celebrate the end of January.

All generalisations suck.

Here we are, February. The days are getting longer, although not warmer. It will snow and snow, and then hopefully stop. It's the month of my birth, of the Chinese New Year, of impetuous daffodils. Hail to very early Spring!

One of the reasons I'm getting excited is because (see previous posts) for me Janaury this year has been more or less a write-off. So only now am I getting to the few but comlicated arranegements (eg website, publicity, printing) for the long awaited publication of my little novel.

Also, on the 29th February, I will have lived in Brighton for a year. Except of course, there being no US Presidential Election and no Olympic Games, 2009 will not include a February 29th.

In five, against Federer. Numero Uno Supremo! Brilliant match.

And at the microphone, Roger Federer was speechless, and cried.

I wish I could write such drama.