We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity

How cool would it be if you could travel back in time?

I don't mean massive, wholesale, time tourism with all the 'Treading on an ant in 4,600,462 BC wipes out the entire human race and replaces them with intelligent custard' scenarios that have been the staple of science fiction stories since 1895.

But your own, personal thing... Maybe a complicated chalk drawing that you can scribble on your basement floor, or a ring you can twist. or a pie you can eat.  But something that flings you, and whatever goods and chattels are about your person, backwards in time with stunning alacrity.

What would you do?

OK, we'll get the easy stuff out of the way first... Hands up all those people who said 'Kill Hitler when he was a child' or Pol-Pot or Bin-Laden or any one of the countless despots that have blighted our glistening little world over the past few thousand years.

Would you? would you really?  What would be the repercussions of those actions?  I agree that all those people committed terrible acts in the name of religion, or nationalism, or their own self-delusion.  But if you think of the bigger picture (and I'm not trying to be flippant) The taking up of arms against these people added something to the general good. made the world a better place.  Did it make it better than it would have been if they hadn't existed? I don't know, but I guess you could test that if you could travel in time - If it turned out worse, you could go back and stop yourself doing it...

Although that gets messy after a while with causality loops and Grandfather paradoxes being flung all over the place.

Would you ring in a bomb threat and get them to clear the World Trade Center on September 11th? - You'd save 2,606 people, presuming that they took you seriously of course - I understand that terrorists have to give a secret code word to let the security services know that it's real nowadays... Wonder who they apply to to get that?

-oOo-

You can imagine the phone call...

*Phone Rings* 'Hello CIA Headquarters'

'Hello, I am a terrorist, I wish to get hold of a validated I am about to commit an act of terrorism in your Sovereign Territory password please'

'Yes sir, please wait whilst I transfer you to the No I don't know why we don't just trace the call and have you shot in the head password delivery department'

*Greensleeves is played on the Stylophone*

'Hello, Giving passwords to terrorists to prove that they're real terrorists department'

'Yes, hello, I would like a password please.'

'No problem sir, Will this be for a bombing, a chemical attack or mass abduction and subsequent torture and murder of innocent children?'

'Do I have to decide now?'

'No, sir of course not, that would go against your human rights. Can I take your name?'

'Errr.. No.'

'Not a problem, address?'

'No...'

'Fine, I will need the name of the organisation that you represent.'

'I'm an independent.'

'Ah... I'm afraid this line is only for members of one of the accepted terrorist groups, al-Qaeda, Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei, Taliban or perhaps the Supreme Military Majlis ul-Shura of the United Mujahideen Forces of the Caucasus for instance?'

'Ah, the last one... Yes, them.. Definitely!'

'You don't seem very sure...'

'No, my cell is definitely aligned with them, I distinctly remember, there was a memo last Thursday.'

'Well, if you say so.... The next password on the list for the SMMuSUMFC is... Erm... Courgette.'

'Courgette?'

'Yes, just ring the number you first called, before the event, give us the codeword and any details that you think we might need.'

'How much before should I call?'

'Oh, there's no hard and fast rule - Whatever you think's fair.'

'Right, thanks, bye!'

'OK, good luck!' *click*

-oOo-

Hoo... Digressed a bit there didn't I? - Anyway, where were we - Oh yeah... You'd just saved all those people, very good, well done, pats on the back all round.

But where do you stop?

Do you go back and try to stop them launching the Titanic and save another 1,500 lives?

Would you clear out the school at Aberfan before the 40,000 cubic meters of slurried spoil heap buried all 116 children (and 28) adults alive on the morning before half-term?

Would you steer the Exxon Valdez away from the reef and save hundreds of thousands of assorted animals?

Would you cultivate a blight-resistant strain of potato and take them to 18th Century Ireland - Another million or so saved there?

Would you go back to Dumfries in 1831 and vaccinate everyone against cholera?

Would you knit all the dinosaurs anti-asteroid crash-helmets?

Would you true believers out there stop them crucifying Iesu Christi?

Would you read the evening paper and go back and save every child that had been knocked over by a car that day?

You'd drive yourself mad, trying to right every injustice in the world - And it wouldn't make a difference... OK, it would make a difference to the people you've saved as Loren Eiseley might argue, especially if they had something of the starfish about them.

I think the world needs some injustice, without it right thinking people would have nothing to rise up against.

I think the world needs some pain, pain teaches you lessons about how to be more careful.

Could you live in a world where nothing bad ever happened?  Where would be the challenge? What would you strive for? How would you grow?

Although saying that, I don't know why I'm bothering, most of us would just go back to buy a lottery ticket with the right numbers on, win £25 million then go back 319 years to 1694, deposit it in the fledgling Bank of England and then jump straight back and collect their £204,430,510,542,395.34 (Approximately, without taking inflation into account) balance.

Or as I like to call it, completely destroying the global banking system.

We're not ready for time-travel - Not ready for all the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimeyness of it.  We'd tinker and tamper and pull away at loose bits of the very fabric of space-time until the whole thing unraveled into a big pile of super-strings on the floor of the void and you'd be sat there on your own with just an old car wheel, a supermarket trolley and a gently smoking hat to prove that the multiverse ever existed at all.

That's why I've decided to re-bury this device I found in the garden so I'm not tempted to meddle again...

I tried some stuff that didn't work, see most of the items above in fact.  But I did a lot more that did - You wouldn't believe what originally happened in Virginia on October 28th 1943... But I stopped it, you should all be very grateful.  I will quite happily accept donations about that. It would have been catastrophic...

You're welcome.

Hang on... I've got an idea... Maybe one last time... See you all soon...

To sleep perchance?

I was thinking about dreams this morning on the way to work, pondering the fact that I can't remember having dreamed for a long time. I appreciate that you often can't remember what your previous night's dreams had been about, but I actually can't remember having any at all recently.

Weird... Maybe I'm overtired, or I'm so good at working out my problems during the day that my brain doesn't need to thrash them out overnight using a tiger with Noel Edmond's face or a three eyed haddock called Raymond who can play the spoons... Pity really... It'd give me some easy bones to throw to you guys.

When I do dream, it tends to be fairly sedentary stuff, real world situations, no flying or turning into an ocelot or a trifle or what-have-you. Just me doing stuff that I would do if I had the time/money/social skills. The only major oddity I can think of is that I've never dreamed about a motorcycle, but I've had many dreams that feature me riding a motorcycle.

That's due a little explanation I suppose, I dream about the act of riding, but as far as I can remember, there's never been a bike. I sort of just float there, in the starfish position, with my hands on non-existant ape-hangers and my feet on completely ficticious forward controls. In fact, I remember having one dream where I tried to ride the (non) bike on several occasions and fell on my ass every time - It transpired that it had been stolen, but I hadn't realised - I actually went to a shop (in the dream) to buy another one, I remember wheeling it (and when I say it, I mean nothing) out of the showroom.

The only other real odd thing that happens to me, and I guess most other sentient life-forms in the Omniverse, is the prophetic or deja-vu dream. It's only snippets that I get, like I'll be dreaming about walking down the road, turning a corner and almost tripping over someone walking an amusing looking dog, and then a couple of weeks later, I'll be walking down the street, turn a corner and there's the dog, with the little wellies and a PVC sou'wester and the 'Please Gods kill me with a length of pipe' expression on its face, whilst the owner carries on about her business not realising what permanent emotional damage she's doing to the poor canine. Never had the lottery numbers though - not so far.

Now, scientists try to tell you that deja-vu is caused by impulses from the eyes being accidentally routed to the memory centres of your brain before being re-routed to the cognitive centres, so you see something, and think that you remember seing it before and then do that double-take, puzzled look, point your finger whilst thinking 'Hang on a second', thing that they do in low-rent comedies that have a laughter track and say 'You have been watching' at the end.

I don't believe that for a second, I think that during sleepy-time, your brain is occasionally hit by a stray Tachyon (a theoretical particle that travels faster than light) and the minute explosion of Cherenkov radiation that's caused by it impacting a live electron in your brain causes you to remember things that haven't happened yet.

Plausible, I think you'll agree.

I also found out recently that according to current theories, all of the people that you see in your dreams are real - I mean, not real, they're dreams obviously, if they were real, physical people and you dreamed about a crowd, then your head wouldn't be big enough to hold them all and it'd like, go POP! or something and there'd be cerebrum all up the bedroom walls when you woke up.

Actually, thinking about it, your head wouldn't be big enough to hold even one physical person would it? Especially if they were wearing a big hat. Aaaaand, you probably wouldn't wake up either. Well, you might, but you might not like celery any more, or be able to smell purple and hear tartan.

But what they actually mean by that is that you haven't made any of these people up in your imagination, you've seen them all somewhere - On the bus or in a shop, you might have pointed at them in a police lineup or said 'Sorry' to them when you bumped into them whlst filming an amusing personal injury compensation lawyer advertisement.

Your brain stores their details for future reference, or for inclusion in dreams, or if they're particularly stereotypical, for thinking about when you're telling a joke that involves a little light racism.

People often dream about people they know, sometimes in unusualy situations. Sometimes it's wish fulfilment, but sometimes you'll dream about things that would make Freud do some interprative street-dance movements in his final resting place in Golders Green (OK, so he was cremated, but you know what I mean).

For instance, a friend of mine (who reads this Blog, whilst walking her dog - which doesn't as far as I know, wear wellies and a sou'wester) once had a dream about me. I know she won't mind me sharing it with you, as she posted it to her Facebook feed herself, and she requested that I write The Further Adventures of the crew of the Edward Teach (Running to FOUR episodes!) - Which I subsequently did, because she was ill in hospital (for all of you who wondered why it was called 'Les Invalides'), so she owes me one.

I'll have to paraphrase what she wrote, as I can't find it on her timeline, but the gist of it was:

"I had a dream last night about an old friend of mine, called Dandy, some of you might know him. Anyway, I was the age I am now, and he was my Dad. I had done something wrong, I don't know what, but he took me to the park for my usual punishment.

This involved him kicking footballs at my head as hard as he could until I learned my lesson, I remember that he was a very good shot."

So, on that dreamscape I'll leave you.

Remeber, dreams aren't real, they're fantasy, you shouldn't be embarrased about them, and you certainly shouldn't make decisions based on their contents.

Till tomorrow... Sweet Dreams Children...

Barnaby Wilde (Pt. 1)

Talking about my trike yesterday reminded me of some of the good times that I'd had in the past on various three wheelers, thought I'd jot some of 'em down so that you could see just how much fun customised motorcycles can be.

-oOo-

I remember the very first time that I rode a trike, thinking back, it was probably a sign - I should have quit whilst I was ahead. It had a 1275GT Mini engine, with a gear linkage made from plasticine and cocktail sticks. When you changed gear, it involved a stirring motion, akin to the one you see in any cartoon where witches and cauldrons are mentioned - The gear you actually got at the end of this process was as random as you'd expect. I rode from the house of my very good friend Scots Mick (He of the Chilli recipies fame - See last years blog) to my own house, some four miles in total. Along the way I clipped the apex of every, single corner - In this instance, you should take 'clipped' to mean rammed into, mounted the pavement and then careened off the other side. In fact, a number of times, I clipped the apex of several perfectly straight roads, which didn't even have apexes.

I was being followed by Mick in his car, in case anything fell of the trike, including myself. We had planned to take the trike to a van hire company where one of 'the boys' worked, so that we could get one of the tires re-seated as it was leaking. Now, before I relay the punchline I have to explain that this particular trike was fitted with what we, in the trade, call 'Ape Hangers' - These are a particular type of handlebar, designed by the devil himself, to make any type of motorcycle that they're fitted to virtually uncontrollable. They do give you that Concussed American Starfish riding position that seems to be popular (or was in the 90's at least.) - Take a minute, Google them, see what you think.

So, we pulled into the car park and I changed down to 2nd gear and attempted to pull into a parking space. Of course, what actually happened was that I accidentally hit the 'Gamble' button on the gear selector and got 1st. This caused me to go skipping across the carpark with the front end in the air (thus rendering the steering inoperable) and punched the back quarter of a parked van with my left fist. Have you ever punched a van hard enough to leave a dent in it the shape of your fist? - It really hurts... Of course my assembled friends ran to my aid, checking that I hadn't done any irrepairable damage to myself - Actually, no, what happened is that they stood, having to lean on each other because they were laughing so much. I think one of them actually wet himself - Especially when they showed me that the trike had skidded to a halt about 12" from a 6' drop.

-oOo-

On another occasion, I left work at 06:30 in the morning to discover it had snowed quite heavily during the night. The snow was deep enough that the rear axle was dragging in it, which played merry hell with the handling. I managed to wrestle the trike out of the industrial estate by bouncing gently off the pavement kerbs as I couldn't see exactly where the road finished and the pavement started. Once out onto the main road, things got a little bit easier as the virgin snow was replaced with black slush. I admit that I got cocky, fishing the back end out on purpose and spinning the rear wheels. Of course, as so often happens in these situations, I got bitten in the butt.

As I approached a busy traffic island and tried to brake, nothing happened - Well, nothing involving slowing down happened, a number of things involving going in the wrong direction took their place. In the 60' trip across the island, the trike spun through 540 deg - A full one and a half turns, with me hanging onto the Apes for grim death. Luckily the other vehicles using the island at that time of the morning managed to avoid me completely. When the trike finally came to rest on the wrong side of the road I had to wait a good ten minutes before I carried on my journey - Not because I was shaking (though I was, like a Portuguese Man O'War with Parkinsons), but purely because the vacuum that had appeared between my clenched sphynchter and the seat meant that I couldn't move.

-oOo-

My final recounting (for this morning at least) involves a trike that didn't actually belong to me as such, it belonged to a young lady that I co-habited with for a while and was powered by an 850 Reliant Robin motor. Don't laugh, it's a great engine when you strip all the fibreglass body from around it. It used to suffer every once in a while from the carbs freezing, but other than that it was bulletproof.

Anywho, we were on our way back from doing the weekly shop (one of the redeeming qualities of trikes is that they can usually carry more cargo than a bike) in the pouring down rain. You know that rain where you just have to look out of the window and you're soaking wet? Well it was heavier than that, heavy enough to frak with the electrics and cause misfires. So, it took a while to get home, sometimes on three cylinders, sometimes on two, but not very often on all four. I chanced to look down between my knees as we pulled onto the drive and noticed that a couple of the HT leads (The leads that go to the spark plugs) were 'tracking' - This means that they were making pretty blue sparks and dumping their precious electricity somewhere other than where they should - In this case they were swapping it between themselves and also with the cylinder head, very kind of them, but not exactly what you want in a perfect world.

N.B. The next two seconds of this story involve the complete disconnection of my hands from my brain.

I thought to myself, 'If I just seperate those leads, I bet it'll run a whole lot better.' Now, the HT leads on a Robin carry about 30,000 volts (as opposed to the 240 volts in the sockets of your house) at an amperage, luckily, just below that required to stop your heart stone dead, so obviously I reached down and went to move the cables apart. The belt I got was sufficiently strong to lift me off the seat, throw me to the ground and cause me to lie in the rain, jumping around and laughing uncontrollably for a good few minutes. Do not try this at home kids, in fact, do not try this anywhere. Again, the reaction of the assembled onlookers was almost terminal merriment.

Bikers are generally a caring bunch...

Below is a picture of my new baby - Well, new might be stretching it a bit - Latest is probably a better bet. She hasn't bitten me yet, but I'm sure she will, given enough time. (Plus you get a free photo of my Daughter, mugging uncontrollably for the camera)