As last year here is a survey to summarise my engagement (or lack of it) with 2014.
1. What did you do that you’d never done before?
Yoga
Have a full body massage
Got hearing aids
Injected myself with drugs (legally!)
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t make New Year resolutions (see here); but I did have some goals most of which I failed to achieve.
3. What would you like to have in 2015 that you lacked in 2014?
£2M
Good health
4. What dates from 2014 will remain etched upon your memory?
None that I can think of.
5. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I had an awful respiratory virus which floored me for over a month in February/March and again in October/November.
And then there’s the ongoing diabetes and depression.
6. What was the best thing you bought?
Gin and champagne
7. Where did most of your money go?
As far as I can tell absolutely nowhere, and certainly nowhere very worthwhile (unless you count gin and champagne!).
8. What did you get really, really excited about?
Nothing; I don’t waste effort on excitement or panic.
9. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a. happier or sadder? — sadder, ‘cos I haven’t kicked the depression hard enough in the gonads.
b. thinner or fatter? — fatter, but not by very much.
c. richer or poorer? — poorer, if only due to expensive dental treatment.
10. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Sex
Sit in the garden in the sun
11. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Been stuck to a desk
12. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Survival
13. What was your biggest failure?
Yoga
14. How many one-night stands?
None
15. What was your favourite TV program?
I’ve just not watched anything like enough TV to be able to make any sort of judgement.
16. What was the best book you read?
Two books by Alice Roberts come out top of the heap: Evolution: The Human Story (Dorling Kindersey, 2011) and The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being: Evolution and the Making of Us (Heron Books, 2014)
17. What did you want and get?
An immense amount of help and support, in all sorts of ways, from Noreen, for which I am far more grateful than I think she realises.
18. What did you want and not get?
£2m
Sanity
19. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Choose between better health and a couple of holidays.
20. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2014?
Nude when possible, clothed when necessary.
21. What kept you sane?
Did anything keep me sane?
22. Who did you miss?
I’ve no idea! I’m not conscious of having specifically missed anyone.
23. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2014:
Quality of life is more important than stressing yourself to conform to society’s expectations. But then I failed to live up to it.
24. A quote or song lyric that sums up your year:
It’ll pass, Sir, like other days in the Army.
[Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time]
25. Your hopes for 2015
Society normalises sex and nudity rather than criminalising it
Any office block which is less than half occupied for more than 3 months has to be converted into flats, or demolished and homes built on the site
Drink more champagne
Be painted or photographed nude
Have at least one 2 week holiday
My mother makes her 100th birthday
So how was your 2014? And what are you hoping for in 2015?
Category Archives: ramblings
The Amusements of 2014
A review of 2014 in things that have amused me during the year.
Product of the Year
In third place we have these magnificent Magical Unicorn Slippers
In second place, is something I find slightly disturbing: Cussons Mum & Me Bump Smooth & Glow Pregnancy Shampoo
But the winner is the Chinese Automatic Sperm Extractor as installed in a Nanjing hospital.
Auction Item of the Year (from our local auction house)
In third place we have: a set of 25 antique glass eyes in fitted case.
In second place: A Second World War papier-mâché helmet .
But pride of place must go to: An old French roll of loo paper.
Name of the Year
Two names stood out for me this year, and I can’t decide between them:
Rev Nims Obunge — a non-conformist minister from Tottenham.
Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, Supreme Head of the Universal Syriac Orthodox Church who died on 21 March this year.
Best Named Organisation of the Year goes to the US National Fenestration Rating Council who were mentioned in the 12 April edition of New Scientist.
Best Oxymoron
Again we have two contenders.
Finest quality recycled paper, which is the proud boast on the paper towel dispenser in the toilet at my doctors’ surgery.
And the Vegan butcher’s shop which has opened recently in New York.
Recipe of the Year
This is one from the archives: Christmas Candle Salad
Just what were they thinking?!??!
Book Titles
These are books I’ve come across (don’t ask!) during the year rather than books published during the year. Again there are several contenders, none of which, I hasten to add, have I read:
The Jewish-Japanese Sex & Cook Book and How to Raise Wolves by Jack Douglas (1972)
Rossetti’s Wombat: Pre-Raphaelites and Australian Animals in Victorian London by John Simons (2008)
You’ve Had Worse Things in Your Mouth Cookbook by Billi Gordon (1986)
But the winner has to be:
Harlequin: Prince Cherrytop and the Good Fairy Fuck, a Pantomime by George Augustus Sala (circa 1877)
Best Academic Paper Title
There was really only ever going to be one contender here. The prize has to go to a paper about stopping nose-bleeds with bacon, which deservedly won on IgNobel Prize:
Nasal packing with strips of cured pork as treatment for uncontrollable epistaxis in a patient with Glanzmann thrombasthenia which is available on PubMed.
Headline
There have been just so many wonderful headlines during the year, but I managed to whittle the list down to these three:
‘Penis soup is something I’ll treasure for ever’: Adventurer Simon Reeve reveals the most stomach-churning dishes he’s encountered, Independent, 2 February
Warwickshire man nose-pushes Brussels sprout up Snowdon, BBC News, 2 August
But by a short head the winner is
Mick Jagger has 19-million-year-old species of ‘long-legged pig’ named after him, Guardian, 11 September
Best Named Animal
Magistrate Armhook Squid (Berryteuthis magister)
Sport of the Year
Again there are three contenders:
Wheelchair Curling — I still can’t work out how you get curling tongs large enough.
Underwater rugby, BBC News, 24 May
But best of all was Penny farthing bicycle polo, again BBC News, 24 May
Best Research Project
What Happens When You Play Music Through A Squid?
And finally …
Best Tweet
Yellow snow warning for Wales, @BBCNews on Twitter, 26 December
I guess the culprit must be all those sheep!
Let me know your favourite amusements of the year — and don’t forget to start collecting for 2015!
Relaxing Christmas
Yes, we’ve had a nice relaxing day of presents, drink and food but without over-indulging.
Had a bit of a lie-in and got up about 9.30. Two mince pies and mug of tea for breakfast.
I rang my mother and had a quick chat with her; she’s in a care home 120 miles away so although we aren’t there she isn’t on her own.
About 11.30 we sat down with an extra large G&T (Noreen had a similarly large Bacardi & Coke) and opened our main presents. As always there was a fair amount of alcohol and quite a few books. But we always manage to find each other something unusual: this year I got Noreen a Jersey milk/cream jug — silver plate, pre-WWII and probably made for the tourist market, but a nice thing nonetheless.
After clearing up a bit we had our traditional Christmas Day lunch of smoked salmon sandwiches at about 1.30 (we have Christmas Dinner in the evening).
At 3-ish Noreen put a large leg of pork in the oven to roast; while I had a nap she went to see the old lady across the road (who is 90+ and on her own) for an hour or so.
Just after 5 we both got to work in the kitchen on the rest of dinner. Somehow we managed to avoid any alcohol in the process!
Dinner at about 7: Roast Pork, sausage, garlic potatoes, roast parsnips, sprouts, chestnut stuffing and apple sauce. Accompanied by a bottle of pink champagne (which also now one of our traditions). No need for starters or pudding; just a good main course.
After dinner we sat and opened presents part two which I accompanied with a glass of an unusual, rather nice and delicate rosé port Noreen had given me. The tradition from my family is to have small presents, from under the tree, in the evening — really just a little something to unwrap like a few chocs or a paperback book.
After that we sat reading for a bit and abhorring the available choices of TV viewing.
And shortly to bed, perhaps to read some more, maybe with another glass of something.
I think we’ll call that a good Christmas!
Social Nudity is a State of Mind
Social nudity (often called nudism or naturism) is poorly accepted by a large percentage of the people; something I explore on the On Nudity and Naturism page on my main website, as I have from time to time here.
This poor acceptance of social nudity seems to be because people do not understand social nudity, and curiously that seems to be a philosophical question; one that revolves around one’s mental imagery and state of mind. An interesting, but quite lengthy, article over at Naturist Philosopher looks at this question in detail.
It turns out that the problem is that most people do not have the right schema (mental context/image) to understand because they have no experience of social nudity on which to build this understanding. Their only experience of nudity is generally in a sexual context so this is the image they use to (mis)understand social nudity. And because social sex is (mostly) taboo everyone runs scared of social nudity — and indeed often private nudity within a contained, safe, family setting — thinking it can be nothing but sexual, and therefore “not nice”.
But social nudity isn’t sexual. Or at least no more (actually probably less) sexual than socialising clothed is. And we don’t generally worry about that!
However we aren’t going to change the popular misconceptions without giving people an alternative on which they can build a new schema. So we need some new paradigms and metaphors to explain social nudity to the uninitiated.
One such metaphor might be that clothes are like body armour: providing a barrier to protect me from the environment, the supposed ill-intentions of others and removing any vulnerability I might feel.
All social nudity is doing is removing the barrier — the packaging, if you like — between me and the environment, allowing me to feel the sun and the breeze on my skin and have the freedom I don’t have wearing clothes. And that’s actually fine because in general others don’t stare or make unwanted physical contact, and vulnerability is but a construct of my mind. This surely has to be goodness.
Social nudity is distinct from private nudity (as many of us indulge in at home) in that it emphasises the non-necessity or non-desirability of clothing in normal, everyday, non-sexual human relations. What the naturist movement has to do is to find ways of explaining this paradigm to people. And explaining it in such a way that it starts to give them some semblance of the experience they need to change their mental schema and become more accepting of social nudity.
Maybe, Naturist Philosopher suggests, the key is freedom. After all food free from pesticides is seen as goodness. So why shouldn’t a lifestyle incorporating freedom from clothes be equally desirable?
On Eating Animals
A week or two ago Virginia Hughes wrote a series of blog posts on personhood for National Geographic. One of them was about our relationship with our pets. In it she says:
When it comes to animals, my choices are full of contradictions and hypocrisies. I eat meat, wear leather, and endorse the use of animal models in medical research. On the other hand, I’m totally taken with the growing body of research demonstrating that non-human animals have cognitive skills once thought to be uniquely human. I believe animal cruelty is wrong and, as regular readers know all too well, I consider my dog part of the family.
Yes, in general I agree with this, although I’m not so happy about the use of animals in medical research. I can see that it is necessary to do some initial drug testing using animals and that behavioural studies could be useful, but these have to be well controlled and strictly necessary. Which is why research institutions have Ethics Committees. That doesn’t necessarily mean I like it. But we must not be using animals for testing things like cosmetics, household cleaners etc.
I fully admit that it is hypocritical of me to eat meat and wear leather when I expect others to rear, slaughter and butcher the animals for me. This is not a comfortable position.
I know that were I to have to procure my own meat then I would never eat beef, pork, lamb etc. again. I could despatch a fish. I could probably smack a bunny on the head, or top a chicken, but couldn’t deal with anything bigger. And I would have to be driven to even this by real, real hunger.
There are few, if any, things I can kill with a clear conscience. Even things I detest, like maggots, I still dislike killing. We gaily believe that these “lower animals” are not sentient. But are they? We have no way of knowing. And if some are, where is the line to be drawn between those that are and those that aren’t. As Virginia Hughes says, the more we learn about animals the more we realise is going on in their heads.
It is a perennial moral and philosophical dilemma.
While I wouldn’t go as far as some Hindu sects who won’t eat meat or eggs because they may be the reincarnation of an ancestor, I do feel that all living creatures deserve respect and have as much right to life as humans. If this is so, who can blame a tiger for killing and eating a man, when we will kill and eat a sheep, cow or pig?
Where I do draw the line is the gratuitous killing of animals, for example hunting or angling as a fun pastime. Hunting animals for food, done as humanely as possible, is one thing. Killing for the sake of it is, in my book, well out of order.
If we are going to eat meat then the least we can do is to try our best to ensure the animals have our respect in life (eg. good farming etc.) and a humane end. There is much to be said for the traditions in some ancient cultures of honouring the meat one is eating. Something which has been perpetuated in Christian circles as the saying of grace before meals. To this end we usually, at least at main meals, drink a toast to whatever noble beast we are eating.
Honour your enemies, for they too are humans beings. And similarly honour the animals you eat for they have given their lives to give you life.
Basically, respect all life. Indeed respect the whole of Nature.
Criminalising Behaviour
A couple of weeks back, on 6 November, Simon Jenkins launched a stinging attack in the Guardian on the government’s propensity to criminalise various behaviours. His full article “Our addiction to criminalising human behaviour makes a mockery of private responsibility” is worth reading, but here are a few key extracts.
If poisoning your foetus with alcohol is a crime, why is it not a crime to abort it? If alcoholism in pregnancy is “attempted manslaughter”, as a QC told the court of appeal … surely abortion is murder.
We need a philosopher — as Raymond Chandler would say — and we need one fast.
The advance of criminal law into these recesses of private morality is ominous.
Now we have the proposed crime of “emotional violence” – including “reducing self-esteem” by calling someone fat – showing there is no limit to the law’s ambition. To be against jailing people for such offences is not to condone what they do, merely to apply some sense of proportion.
Oxford’s Jonathan Glover sought to apply moral precepts to everyday life in his excellent book, Causing Death and Saving Lives. He quoted from Karamazov the brother’s euphoric cry that “everyone is responsible for everyone else and in every way”. It was, he said, heavy with “nightmare implication”.
[…]
Such paternalism – or perhaps control freakery – led the last Labour government to create 4,300 new offences through 50 criminal justice acts. It led Tony Blair to justify war against one state after another, for its own good.
[…]
Glover asked only that we “work out what things are most important and then try to see where we ourselves have a contribution to make” … There must be some room left for private responsibility.
Indeed there must be some room — I would say a lot of room — for personal responsibility. We are too good at insisting that someone — anyone — is to blame except us. It is never our fault or our responsibility.
This has to stop. We have to start taking responsibility for our own actions. Just as we cannot be responsible for other people’s emotional reactions, we cannot expect them to be responsible for things which are down to us to attend to.
Guys & gals … We have to grow up and take responsibility for ourselves, and tell our politicians to get out the way.
Five Questions, Series 6 #5
OK, so at last here is the last of Series 6 of Five Questions.
Question 5: What gets you out of bed in the morning?
For once we have a very simple answer!
The need to pee. Every morning! Without that I would quite likely not bother to get out of bed.
Judging by my total inability to get round to answering these five questions, I may or may not do another series sometime next year.
Five Questions, Series 6 #4
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! I had completely forgotten about the ast two questions in my Five Questions series. No excuses; just incompetence! So without further ado, here is the answer to Question 4.
Question 4: If all the nations in the world are in debt, who’s got the money?
Well for a start it isn’t me!
What are we talking about here? Governments being in debt? If so, well yes they are, almost by definition.
Remember that no government has any money. All they have is what they take from us as tax and what they can borrow either on the open market or in exchange for government bonds. So government will always, by definition, be in debt.
So who do governments borrow money from? Basically anyone who will lend it to them. That’s how the market works. And these people are? Businesses and the rich. They are the only people with money.
So however they manage to acquire it — basically selling things either legally or illegally — businesses and people are the only ones with any money.
Coming up in November
Here’s my selection of events, celebrations and customs that are happening during November.
[Reminder: These listings contain an eclectic mix of anniversaries, historical events, red letter days and upcoming “awareness events”, mostly UK-centric. My rules for the inclusion of awareness events are that they must not be medical, nor aimed specifically at children, nor too obviously purely commercial; and they must have a useful website.]
1 to 30 November
National Novel Writing Month. Can you write a novel in a month? That’s the challenge for all the budding authors out there. The idea is to write your 50,000 words in just thirty days. More information, hints, tips and events over at http://nanowrimo.org/.
1 November
London (Regent Street) Veteran Car Concours. If you’re in central London on this day you’ll find many of the cars taking part in the London-Brighton Veteran Car Run on display in Regent Street. And some may even be limbering up around the West End. So take your camera and keep your eyes open. Basic evnet information at www.classicshowsuk.co.uk/classic-car-show-event-information/classic-car-show-by-date.asp?id=515.
2 November
London-Brighton Veteran Car Run. This is reportedly to be the longest running car event in the world and ranks as one of Britain’s biggest motoring spectacles. It attracts entrants from around the world, all eager to take part on the first Sunday in November. Only cars built before 1 January 1905 are eligible to take part so this is a fine spectacle of early automobile engineering. More details at www.vccofgb.co.uk/lontobri/.
5 November
Guy Fawkes Day when the UK celebrates the defeat of terrorism by the foiling of Guido Fawkes’ 1605 plot to blow up King James I along with the whole of Parliament. The celebration is traditionally marked with bonfires and fireworks, much to the annoyance of most of our pets. Many places have their own special Guy Fawkes celebrations, including Tar Barrel rolling at Ottery St Mary, Devon and Lewes Bonfire Night in East Sussex.
8 November
Lord Mayor’s Show. Held on the second Saturday in November, this is the pageant to accompany the inauguration of the new Lord Mayor of the City of London. Along with the usual plethora of floats there are military bands and pikemen in gaudy medieval dress.
9 November
Remembrance Day. The UK’s annual commemoration of those lost not just in WWI and WWII but in all wars.
11 November
Martinmas, the Feast of St Martin of Tours, is a time for feasting celebrations — much like American Thanksgiving — and in many places another bonfire festival. Traditionally at this time the autumn wheat seeding was completed and there was the annual slaughter of fattened cattle and swine which could not be kept through the winter. Historically, hiring fairs were held where farm labourers would seek new posts.
29 November to 7 December
National Tree Week is the UK’s largest tree celebration and launches the start of the winter tree planting season. It is also a great chance for communities to do something positive for their local treescape. Full details at www.treecouncil.org.uk/Take-Part/National-Tree-Week.
30 November
On this day in 1934 the Flying Scotsman was the first steam locomotive to exceed 100 mph.
Rolling Geriatrics
This is such a wonderful picture! The Rolling Stones at the Adelaide Oval preparatory to recommending their Australian tour. Just which geriatrics home have they been let out of for the day?
Mind, they’ll probably still be going strong long after me!