I like a nice cup of tea in the morning,
Just to start the day you see;
And at half past eleven,
Well my idea of heaven,
Is a nice cup of tea.

I like a nice cup off tea with my dinner,
And a nice cup of tea with my tea,
And about this time of night,
What goes down a treat, you’re right,
It’s a nice cup of tea.

As well as the deep truth underlying the words, I suddenly became aware of the beginning of the second stanza: “a nice cup of tea with my dinner, and a nice cup of tea with my tea“.

I’d guess the last part of this may be confusing to a non-UK audience, or it may conjure up images of period-drama afternoon tea with cucumber sandwiches and parasols over a game of croquet.

Now the meaning of ‘dinner’ has been a matter of discussion in my household for years.

When I was a child ‘dinner’ was the light meal in the middle of the day, whereas ‘tea’ was the main meal at around 6 o’clock.

In contrast, Fiona takes a more pragmatic approach: ‘dinner’ is the main meal whether taken midday or in the evening.

My impression is that, when I was a child, this was part of a general class distinction. Posh (middle class) people ate lunch at midday, dinner in the evening, watched BBC and drank coffee. The working class ate dinner at midday, ate tea in the evening, watched ITV (the channel with adverts), and drank tea.

Weirdly in school one had ‘school dinners’ or ‘free dinners’ if on benefits, but had ‘packed lunches’.

We have sometimes discussed whether the tea/dinner distinction was more a Welsh-ism. But the advertising jingle clearly shows it was widespread².

Now-a-days I tend to use the words rather interchangeably, and certainly happy to use ‘lunch’. Is this because I have become part of the professional classes or a general shift of language?

What do you call meals? Is it the same as when you were little? Is it still a class distinction?

1. According to responses in AnswerBank, this was from an original 1937 song for Brook Bond ‘D’ brand … and in fact the word ‘tea’ was replaced by ‘D’ … but I obviously missed this and remember it as ‘tea’!  The original lyrics have slightly different final lines, “And when it’s time for bed, There’s a lot to be said, For a nice cup of tea“, or maybe I simply misremembered the advert. [back]
2. even in 1937 [back]

If you are expecting the annual virtual cracker from me it is coming … but maybe not before Twelfth Night :-/

The New Year is bringing changes, not least, as many already know, I am moving my academic role and taking up a part-time post as professor down in Birmingham University.

At Birmingham I will be joining an established and vibrant HCI centre, including long-term colleague and friend Russell Beale.  The group has recently had substantial  investment from the University leading to several new appointments including Andrew Howes (who coincidentally also has past Lancaster connections).

The reasons for the move are partly to join this exciting group and partly to simplify life as Talis is based in Birmingham, so just one place to travel to regularly, and one of my daughters also there.

Of course this also means I will be leaving many dear colleagues and friends at Lancaster, but I do expect to continue to work with many and am likely to retain a formal or informal role there for some time.

As well as moving institutions I am also further reducing my percentage of academic time — typically I’ll be just one day a week academic.  So, apologies in advance if my email responses becomes even more sporadic and I turn down (or fail to answer ) requests for reviews, PhD exams, etc.

Although moving institutions, I will, of course, continue to live up in Tiree (wild and windy, but, at the moment, so is everywhere!), so will still be travelling up and down the country; I’ll wave as I pass!

… and there will be another Tiree Tech Wave in March

Back in the UK and Ireland, actually less decorations, and certainly none of the giant gingerbread houses (except in the German Market in Birmingham), but certainly, in hotels and shops, tinsel and Christmas trees, and piped carols and Christmas music.   This time a broader selection of music, including “Fairytale’ (which I love) and ELP’s “I believe in Father Christmas” (which is also glorious).

Maybe the words of the latter are a little too dark for Malaysian taste.  According to Wikipedia’s page on the song,  some think the lyrics are anti-Christian, but Greg Lake evidently said it was written as reaction to the commercialisation of Christmas.   Certainly the song captures some of the disillusionment of a world that has lost its certainties, yet wistfulness at what it has lost, and still feeling a sense of the hope that Christmas conjures even when the reasons for it have been long forgotten:

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave new year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear

On a recording of an interview with BBC Scotland on Lake’s own web site, he even says that he does believe in Father Christmas

However, as I heard it again and again on my travels, and especially as I sat musing in the Harbour Hotel in Galway, it was the last lines of the final verse that captured me:

They said there’ll be snow at Christmas
They said there’ll be peace on earth
Hallelujah, Noel, be it heaven or hell
The Christmas you get you deserve

When it was written not long after the napalm drenched years of the Vietnam war and today when radio-controlled drones and road-side bombs are never far from the news, the message of peace on earth can sound like a cruel joke.  Maybe the ravaged world at Christmas time is no more than we deserve.

Yet the strange and shocking message of the child in the stable is exactly the opposite, the Christmas we get is not what we deserve.  The Christmas story isn’t about God waiting until the Jewish nation were good enough, nor the Romans that occupied their land.  Like every baby born to every couple, it does not wait in the womb until we are good enough to beparents, God help us if it were so, the human race would have long perished!  The Christ child is not a reward for the deserving, but, to a broken world, a free gift for all.

I think this lavish free gift was particularly close to mind due to a talk I heard while in Malaysia.  The speaker was working with IT systems for disabled children, and started his talk referring to the Koran for motivation; he said how the Koran teaches that if you do good on earth you will receive a reward in heaven. For me coming from a Christian background, this message was both familiar and similar to teachings I’ve heard from childhood, and yet also in some ways precisely the opposite.  The two parts of the clause are the same, but the connective is different.  In Christian theology, it is not that there is a reward in heaven because we do good, but rather we are enjoined to do good because we already have a reward in heaven.  The full, unstinting, unreserved gift of God always comes first.

This said, my feeling is that things are not so different in the actual practice of life.  Certainly, Muslim friends I know are not counting up their good deeds in some celestial bank balance.  For Muslim, Christian and Atheist alike, those who give themselves to ‘charity’ (such a lovely world, sadly debased) find it becomes its own purpose.

But for Christians, it also seems hard to accept that the Christmas we get is not what we deserve.  There is something uncomfortable and difficult about that free gift.  It is like those spam emails that come offering free computers or free holidays, we feel there must be a catch, or maybe that we don’t want to be beholden to others.  We invent ways to invert the clauses, to try to earn things, to turn the gift into wages.  In traditional churches it is about rituals and observances, in reformed churches it tends to be about statements of belief and right doctrine.  Both are important, but so easily become ways of earning what has already been given, of distracting us from and detracting from the core message of Christmas, as told to the shepherds 2000 years ago: “good news of great joy that will be for all the people“.

A Gift.

1 Comment »
.      . Prior art  O  : – )

If the person who left the comment on the blog in my dreams is out there — good on you!

I usually find that incompetence and coincidence are better explanations than intrigue and conspiracy, but one wonders here whether there has not been some careful PR management in the background.  Certainly, the effect of the last weeks has been to divert the attention of media and public away from the real issues of the protest: the contrast between growing poverty in the country and increasing wealth in the finance industry, so that even the news of obscene corporate pay rises during the period was sidelined.

Perhaps more significant in the long term has been the weakening of the position of St Paul’s staff who have often been a gentle but persistent critic of the City, long before the protesters camped and will continue to be long after the camp is dissolved and they return to their normal lives or the next cause.

Jesus said “be as wise as serpents, yet harmless as the dove“, but it seems this time the real serpents have won on wisdom.  I just hope that during the coming months the spotlight can shift to where it belongs, and public and press focus on the increasing injustice and disparity not just in the City of London, but across the country and world.

The C2C ride is part of Miriam’s preparation for her 400km cycle ride in Kenya next February (see her blog “BICYCLE, BICYCLE, BICYCLE (I want to ride my…)“), organised by Women V Cancer, in support of several women’s cancer charities. During the Kenya ride Miriam will be doing a gruelling 50 miles a day in summer heat and on not-so-smooth roads, compared to just 35 miles a day on the C2C.  Janet Finlay, Rachel Cowgill and I are joining Miriam on the C2C, and Miriam, Janet and Rachel recently had their own pre-C2C training weekend down in the hills north of Cardiff, up near Aberfan (site of the 1966 disaster, which I posted about a few months ago).

In principle this should be a leisurely ride, we are doing it in four days, some people manage it in three or even two.  However, I’d not been on a bike for ten years before last summer, and since June have been travelling continuously and consequentially only stepped onto the bike four times — so not a lot of practice.  Furthermore, Tiree does not offer a lot of practice for cross-mountain cycling … the last time I cycled up a hill was 1994!  So, Alston Moor and the Pennines may be a bit of a challenge :-/

I’ll do a post when I finish and tweet (@alanjohndix) on the way (mobile signal allowing).

I’m not doing any sponsorship individually, but if you would like to support me and my sore bottom do add a few pounds on Miriam’s JustGiving page for Kenya and pop in the comments box that it is for me on the C2C.

With a world population of 6,963,070,029¹, that is around one in a trillion chance that I will die from UARS this year.  Given the annual risk from asteroid impact or shark attack is around one in in 2 billion², that sounds quite good for UARS (but must buy that shark repellent from Boots).

Of course, it is a bit unfair comparing the UARS that has been up there for 20 years spinning round the world like frenzy, with more mundane day-to-day risks like crossing the road.  For air travel they take into account the distance travelled and aim for safety factors around 1 accident (but with a lot of people in the aeroplane) every hundred million flying miles and achieving a figure about 10 times better than that³.

At 375 miles the UARS will have been orbiting at 7.55978 km/s⁴, so travelled 2.9 billion miles in the last 20 years.  That means it is causing one death in 10 trillion miles travelled … five thousand times safer than air flight, 120 million times safer than car travel⁵, and around million times safer than bicycle⁶.  I must cancel my KLM ticket home and get one by satellite.

1. World population of 6,963,070,029 at 5:14 UTC (EST+5) Sep 19, 2011 according to US Census Bureau World Population Clock [back]
2. Scientific American, “Competing Catastrophes: What’s the Bigger Menace, an Asteroid Impact or Climate Change?“, Robin Lloyd, March 31, 2010 [back]
3. Wikipedia Air Safety page quotes different, but close numbers: 3 deaths per 10 billion passenger miles, one death in 20 billion passenger miles and 0.05 deaths per billion passenger kilometers. [back]
4. CalcTool Earth Orbit Calculator [back]
5. Based on UK figures of 3,431 deaths per year (US NHTSA) and 26.7 billion miles driven in the UK per year (Admiral Insurance). [back]
6. Wikipedia Air Safety statistics [back]

For the night, due to an overbooked hotel elsewhere, I ended up at the Adelphi Hotel, right in the heart of Liverpool, only a hundred yards from Lime Street Station and the St George’s Hall, where the performance was staged.

The Adelphi seems like an hotel from a different age, a huge Victorian edifice in the heart of Liverpool city centre.  The perhaps more imposing station hotel has been converted into student accommodation, so now the Adelphi stands alone in the centre jostling with the glass and neon Holiday Inn and Travelodge for station travellers, still representing tradition in an age of automatic check-in and Lego-kit furnishing.

Like an ageing aunt, remembering her dancing days, bright lipstick slightly awry, the Adelphi is clearly struggling to maintain its dignity assailed  by the recession and narrowing margins from without, crumbling masonry and cast-iron radiators within, and the occasional onslaught of amiable drunks passing on their way from pub to pub.

Sometimes it seems that, like the crooked lipstick, things slip: three times dragging my suitcase up and down to and from my sixth floor room until my keycard was properly programmed (yes electronic keys, signs of the 21st century), the water taps that only just work and never gave a hot shower, or the lifts that seemed to constantly deliver the same packed group of pensioners up to the sixth floor when they really wanted to get down to the ground. But, like the firmly grasped handbag, hat and Sunday gloves, signs of a different standard of service, vast veneer wooden wardrobe and dressing table, brocade-covered arm chairs, a real teapot and cup and saucers with the (electric) kettle, and of course a room-service menu that includes “roast of the day”.

At breakfast it feels like a post-apocalyptic science-fiction set where in the aftermath of 1950s atomic testing  all conception ceased and so now, from wall to wall, the room is filled with septuagenarians eating unending supplies of bacon, fried eggs and toasted crumpets, with the only under-60 faces the serving staff from Eastern Europe, which has evidently been spared the mass impotence of the West.

But, did you notice, in an age of croissants, yogurt and Danish pasties – crumpets, yes real crumpets for breakfast – a trace of the Empire still survives in Liverpool L1.

So like the ageing aunt, whose occasional quirks and impatience you forgive, overlooking her inexpert makeup, for the memory of war-time childhood and rock-and-roll romances, so with the Adelphi, I forgive its dodgy plumbing and erratic lift, for the glimpse of a style and a world that is past and will soon be gone for ever.

And in days to come, in some hotel room of plastic, steel and wine-bar-like sheen, I will dream of my night at the Adelphi.

“Maybe people like car warranties have so many years or so many miles? Each flight a little death; 400 more miles on the clock. Better walk.”

This was half in jest, but set me thinking.

Each time I fly I feel thinner, more distant, like some bored executive’s rubber desktop toy overstretched. Now this may simply be age or ennui, but, naturally resisting such a simple explanation, I wonder about an alternative Pullman-esque world, not so different from our own, where, while our bodies move, some part of our soul, like a snail track or Theseus letting out Ariadne’s thread, is stretched behind, so that in the sky amongst the vapour trail of each passing plane, two hundred souls are also spread, vapourous, across the heavens.

It is not so far from the world we know where, with nostalgia and fond memory, it is clear some part of our heart is always left behind. If we move slowly, or rest still for periods, our souls regrow, regenerate, but, if we move too fast or too far, our body, Golem-like, continues to walk, yet our eyes increasingly blankly stare from an emptied heart, and our soul blows gossamer-like, spread thin across the empty seas.

Osama bin Laden had few friends in the governments of the Mulsim world, even the Taliban, which had been secretly trying to get rid of him to the US for some years before 9/11. Maybe the Islamic court would have had him imprisoned or executed itself. Maybe it would have extradited him to the US to stand trial there. Either way it would have been under an Islamic aegis, rather than perceived as an act against Islam.

Just imagine the world now with no Afghan war, no perceived invasion of Muslim countries (although maybe the Iraq war would have happened earlier without Afghanistan to take attention). So many thousands of lives. Possibly no Bali, Madrid or London bombings.

One of the reason there was no public pressure at the time for this legal rather than military route was the lack of reporting. I was perhaps fortunate to be flying on 9/11 and spent the three weeks after in South Africa where the detention was well reported. When I returned home, it was mentioned just a few times in interviews and discussions and in each case the interviewer ignored it and moved on to a fresh questions as if it were too embarrassing to be discussed. I heard later that, in the early days after 9/11, the BBC was more open in its reporting, but got its ‘wrists slapped’ by government, and so, by the time I was back, was avoiding difficult issues; something that sadly seems to be the case since in many conflicts.

If 10 years ago we had cared more for justice than revenge, then Osama bin Laden could have been a symbol of unity between Islamic and Western worlds, jointly prosecuted and condemned for the killing of innocents. Instead he has become a cause of division, that is unlikely to end with his death,