Pre-science

'He also had a device which looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million 'pages' could be summoned at a moment's notice. It looked insanely complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it fitted into had the words DON'T PANIC printed on it in large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was in fact that most remarkable of all books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub-meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in.'


From the book of the same name, written by the late lamented Douglas Adams and first published in 1979.

Terrifying new technology

Having installed Dragon NaturallySpeaking on the new net book I am discovering I can use it in in all sorts of applications, including this one. It's scary but it's going to prove very useful.

To every thing there is a season

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. 


Ecclesiastes III (King James Version)

Black is the colour of my true love's hair

Black, black, black is the colour of my true love's hair.
His lips are something wond'rous fair
The purest eyes and the bravest hands.
I love the grass whereon he stands.
I love my love and well he knows,
I love the ground whereon he goes
And if my love no more I see
My life would quickly fade away.
Black, black, black is the colour of my true love's hair.


Traditional, via Joan Baez

Auntie Kit and the World Wide Web

Auntie Kit was a one-off. Some people called her eccentric, but she was just her own woman. She was my Great Aunt, my Grandmother's sister. They didn't get on.

Grandma was a terrible hypochondriac and always had to be the centre of attention. If you asked her how she was feeling, the best she would say was 'A little better, thank you'. If her doctor had the nerve to tell her there was nothing wrong with her, she changed doctors. She maintained that she slept little, if at all.

One time, they went to stay with a relative and had to share a bedroom. Auntie Kit accused her sister of keeping her awake with her snoring. How could this be? Grandma never slept. If she didn't sleep, how could she snore? Auntie Kit went out and bought earplugs, which she ostentatiously inserted every bedtime. To the end of her days, any mention of earplugs was enough to send Grandma into a huff.

Auntie Kit was born in the Victorian age, but she was a thoroughly modern woman. She was matter-of-fact, too. Her late husband had reputedly invented the motor scooter and the 'teasmade' machine, but neglected to patent them. In later years, when I knew her, her house was a web of strings that led to her chair and turned on things at a distance. Kind of an early remote control system. The story goes that in their first home there was a ghost. Auntie Kit was on first-name terms with the ghost, but her husband was unaware of its presence. One day he ran down the stairs, gibbering with fright. 'Ah', said Auntie Kit, 'You've met her'.

Auntie Kit had a theory about memory. Our heads, she said, were far too small to contain everything we knew, or were expected to know. Instead, we all carried the sum of our knowledge and experiences in a cloud that surrounded our head. All we had to do was tune in to the correct wavelength and the information we thought we had forgotten would still be there. Often, when stumped for an answer in an exam, I would recall Auntie Kit's cloud and tune in. It always worked.

I like to think of Auntie Kit as, like her husband, a visionary ahead of her time. As with her remote controls made of string, so with her theory of information. It was all out there, we just had to find it. Bring on the World Wide Web and the Internet that inhabits it. Bring on Google and its kin and we can all tune in.

As a child, the best advice my Dad ever gave me was 'Look it up'. If I asked a question and he didn't know the answer, he would point me to our two sets of encyclopedias and say 'Look it up'. And look it up I did. We weren't a bookish household. That wasn't the way either of my parents had been brought up. But we did have those encyclopedias, bought in stages and at some expense. They were our gateway to the world of knowledge and our knowledge of the world.

The advice and the temptation to look it up have never left me. I have an insatiable curiosity about the world and all that is in it. When I first went online, a whole world of wonders opened up to me. From a home and a situation that were far from happy, I could escape into another world. Not to a fantasy world, but to the wonders of the real one - to new places, new friends and, ultimately, to a new life.

So, to my thanks to Auntie Kit and to Dad, I want to add my thanks to Sir Tim Berners Lee.

You don't know who he is? Look him up.

Sarah & Gary's Wedding

Still digesting the wedding, uploading and revisiting the pictures and the videos. So many images in the mind too. It will take them a long time to process their own memories. I expect chilling out in Mauritius will help.


One picture I couldn't take but that will stay forever in my mind, and that is of their faces looking up at me as I read the lesson, taking in every word.


Sarah's determination that everything should be perfect was of course impossible to achieve, and small things like the Bentley with the bridesmaids getting lost, making her late when she was ready in good time, will be the tiny flaws that make it funny and human and ultimately more memorable. What will be remembered is the care she took over the details, so that every single one of us was made to feel special too. This was not just about Sarah, or even Sarah and Gary, but about all of us who wish them well.