Hello There
Those of you who remember my television appearances and who were fortunate to be able to view them in colour will know that I adopt a sober approach to the chromatic aberrations with which others make a spectacle of themselves these days. Grey, taupe, beige and oatmeal form my sartorial palette: I find that any garishness in my visual presentation will clash inordinately with the brilliance of the message I intend to impart*.
Yet whereas I prefer to eschew colour per se, its role is imperative to the world in which we live. Insects scream “I am (or could be) dangerous! Don’t touch (or eat) me!”. Flowers cry “Look at me! Help me procreate! Come inside and have a rummage around”. Attraction, distraction and the imparting of information: life uses colour in the interests of self-preservation and promotion, much as society has adopted it too.
But what precisely IS colour, and do you see the same colour as me? We know that the top traffic light is red, but is your red the same as mine? Would I find yours at the top? As we are all trichromatic primates, if I was to be given a direct feed into your optical nerve one would assume that whatever identifies red in your eye would identify the same red in mine… but what if I have more of them than you do, as I probably have? What happens if you have an eye-transplant? Would your new perceived blue be the same as your previously perceived blue? And does it matter?
At times like this I need to sit down in a darkened room because, if it does matter, I worry that none of us has ever worried about it mattering. I simultaneously see red, feel blue and am green with envy - but , again, are my red, blue and green the same as yours? And do you see what I mean?
This question leads on to others. I might hear you say “I dream in colour”. Do you? Or do you just perceive your dreams to be in colour? And if the optic nerve is responsible for bringing colour information to the brain from the eye, and our eyes are closed when we dream, where are these colours coming from? As everything in our dreams is a fabrication or reconstruction of memory, then those colours must be those we have already experienced. I think we have already agreed that these colours may not be the same for each of us.
So Protanopia, Deuteranopia and Tritanopia sufferers will therefore rejoice at my latest campaign to have the television licence fee reduced incrementally for colour-blindness sufferers. Full colour licences are currently £145.50, and black and white licences £49 per annum. Viewers with colour blindness will be required to take a simple test, fill in the purple form and return it in the turquoise envelope to obtain a discount. Any shortfall in revenue to the licensing authorities would be made up by a £50 surcharge for people who insist in watching their televisions on that dreadful ‘vivid’ setting.
Personally, I dream in oatmeal.
With warmest regards
Vernon Thornycroft
*There will be those of you who recall me wearing a lurid ‘day-glo’ orange Terylene tie during my television appearance analysing contemporary music as a narrative in post-war British cinema, some years ago. This was at a whim of Anthony, my director, and I succumbed all too easily in an absurd attempt to appear “dead boss” to an audience with whom I was - and apparently still am - unfamiliar.
Thursday 24 June 2010
Monday 21 June 2010
On Visibility
Hello There
Often, as I work into the early hours, the sound of whatever the Home Service has become these days interrupts my trains of thought with a most annoying expression. "Channel Light Vessel Automatic: visibility 20 miles", announces the dinner-jacketed meteorologist in a perfunctory monotone.
I become intensely disturbed by this, because it is a short phrase crammed with contradiction, inconsistency and invention. Let me expand.
If this unmanned, yawing hulk anchored somewhere between Plymouth and the Channel Islands is ‘automatic’, how can it measure visibility? Is it sentient? Can it watch? If so, how does it know what to watch? Or is there equipment on it which provides an image which, through various relaying devices, can be watched by someone elsewhere? Are jpegs sent hourly to the Met Office in Exeter? Does an Elder Brethren sit haunched high on a headland somewhere on the South Coast peering at a television screen? And if so, how does he know that as far as he can see is further than 19 miles away, yet closer than 21?
One would assume therefore that the Admiralty has festooned our western approaches with carefully positioned buoys, each displaying individually numbered tags similar to those forensic officers place next to the bullets around the corpse of a machine-gunned mafia victim. However, consider the days that salty sea-dogs must therefore have spent in open boats, diligently placing these calibrated markers at precisely nominated distances from the light ship. We have always been a nation of great maritime ingenuity yet the process of visualising such a laborious scenario tires me immensely.
As the great liners steam west, why do passengers not notice these numbered floats - indeed, why are they not aroused from their bunks as they hear them smash against the hull?
This is a theoretically lame (sea)horse which falls at the first hurdle of comprehension. When the aforesaid agent examines the image from the automatic device, how does he know that the resolution of the image he has been sent has not been compromised in transmission? Has sea spray dried on the apparatus lens? Rogue seaweed may have become lodged in the mechanism. The image may have become distorted. If a Golden Eagle can read a newspaper at three miles, would it be able to read the same newspaper if it had previously wrapped greasy fish and chips? And would it be able to read it as well at night, assuming the newspaper is no longer in the illuminated fish-and-chip shop?
Naturally, being both a great thinker and born communicator, I can see huge possibilities in my exploring this quandary in a visually exciting television programme. Some of you will remember me from the small screen previously and I am sure you would be delighted to watch me once again in my investigation: “How visibility can be determined when there is no-one there to look”.
This is a paradoxical issue which vexed me inordinately until only a few moments ago, when the telephone rang and an ex-colleague from nobel gases at Culham explained. Apparently some bright spark came up with a tube-like device which takes a sample of atmosphere and bounces a laser beam back and forth within it. The intensity of the laser is measured as it subsequently diminishes. When visibility is poor, the laser loses strength faster than when visibility is good.
So the Met Office bought a dozen, bolted them onto converted trawlers and gave a fine body of hawk-eyed matelots the heave-ho. Such is progress.
With warm regards
Vernon Thornycroft
Often, as I work into the early hours, the sound of whatever the Home Service has become these days interrupts my trains of thought with a most annoying expression. "Channel Light Vessel Automatic: visibility 20 miles", announces the dinner-jacketed meteorologist in a perfunctory monotone.
I become intensely disturbed by this, because it is a short phrase crammed with contradiction, inconsistency and invention. Let me expand.
If this unmanned, yawing hulk anchored somewhere between Plymouth and the Channel Islands is ‘automatic’, how can it measure visibility? Is it sentient? Can it watch? If so, how does it know what to watch? Or is there equipment on it which provides an image which, through various relaying devices, can be watched by someone elsewhere? Are jpegs sent hourly to the Met Office in Exeter? Does an Elder Brethren sit haunched high on a headland somewhere on the South Coast peering at a television screen? And if so, how does he know that as far as he can see is further than 19 miles away, yet closer than 21?
One would assume therefore that the Admiralty has festooned our western approaches with carefully positioned buoys, each displaying individually numbered tags similar to those forensic officers place next to the bullets around the corpse of a machine-gunned mafia victim. However, consider the days that salty sea-dogs must therefore have spent in open boats, diligently placing these calibrated markers at precisely nominated distances from the light ship. We have always been a nation of great maritime ingenuity yet the process of visualising such a laborious scenario tires me immensely.
As the great liners steam west, why do passengers not notice these numbered floats - indeed, why are they not aroused from their bunks as they hear them smash against the hull?
This is a theoretically lame (sea)horse which falls at the first hurdle of comprehension. When the aforesaid agent examines the image from the automatic device, how does he know that the resolution of the image he has been sent has not been compromised in transmission? Has sea spray dried on the apparatus lens? Rogue seaweed may have become lodged in the mechanism. The image may have become distorted. If a Golden Eagle can read a newspaper at three miles, would it be able to read the same newspaper if it had previously wrapped greasy fish and chips? And would it be able to read it as well at night, assuming the newspaper is no longer in the illuminated fish-and-chip shop?
Naturally, being both a great thinker and born communicator, I can see huge possibilities in my exploring this quandary in a visually exciting television programme. Some of you will remember me from the small screen previously and I am sure you would be delighted to watch me once again in my investigation: “How visibility can be determined when there is no-one there to look”.
This is a paradoxical issue which vexed me inordinately until only a few moments ago, when the telephone rang and an ex-colleague from nobel gases at Culham explained. Apparently some bright spark came up with a tube-like device which takes a sample of atmosphere and bounces a laser beam back and forth within it. The intensity of the laser is measured as it subsequently diminishes. When visibility is poor, the laser loses strength faster than when visibility is good.
So the Met Office bought a dozen, bolted them onto converted trawlers and gave a fine body of hawk-eyed matelots the heave-ho. Such is progress.
With warm regards
Vernon Thornycroft
Wednesday 16 June 2010
On Preservation
Hello there
First foray into this particular domain, but it makes sense, and I’m sure all my continuing correspondents will appreciate having unbridled access to the horse’s mouth, as it were.
Those expecting a first treatise on my current work “Solecistic Deliberation Within Academic Conceptualisation” will be disappointed. This worthy tome remains in a state of limbo - pressures from without have distracted, delayed and damaged what progress I had hoped to make these past few months. Pressure not least from my work for the shadow National Gasometer Collection.
This august body, whose council I was invited to join some years ago, has been making unprecedented demands on our time. As you will know, the sNGC exists to preserve our nation’s gas-holding heritage, and we have amassed over 30 dismantled examples of Britain’s most notable gasometers ready for exhibition at an appropriate site. Following rejection by the Duke of Devonshire to house this magnificent collection on the banks of his lake at Chatsworth House in the Peak District, I and my fellow council members have been exploring and enquiring after every possible location before these ageing and impressive behemoths turn to rust.
My own personal contacts in the world of academe have not borne fruit. Other than an intriguing suggestion that Keele University be levelled to create a space for something educational, and an adventurous proposal from the Faculty of Astronomy at Imperial College that several be adapted to replicate the atmospheric conditions of a selection of the larger planetary satellites, little has been achieved. The likelihood of the latter is tenuous in the extreme, and a shame too: who would not jump at the opportunity to enjoy a lungful of whatever they’re breathing on Io, Europa, Titan and Triton these days?
A colleague on the council, the Rev. Ignatius Lumpopo, is also having trouble trying to convince Lambeth Palace that a number of redundant or misused ecclesiastical premises be razed in order to accommodate the Collection. The love Ignatius has of gasometers is well-documented, yet I fear that his passion and exuberance may have rubbed the Synod up the wrong way. His proposal that Ridley Hall be demolished to accommodate the collection on Granta Place did not go down well with the Cambridge authorities: “We’ve only just sorted out the swans - now they want to infest the place with effing gasometers” was the response from The Rev. Adrian Tompkins ThM, PhD, MA, Lecturer in Old Testament Deconstructivism and Ethics.
So I appeal to readers for suggestions - remember, the Collection needs to be placed close to an expanse of water. This would also afford a suitable venue wherein the Collection may operate “Indisputable”, its rare Edwardian coal-fired LPG tanker which, for some reason, is the only example still in existence.
A correspondent asked me recently whether I would ever consider appearing on the television again. For those of you unfamiliar with my work on the small screen, some years ago I enjoyed exploring obscure and overlooked cinema on behalf of viewers on ‘Bravo’, a channel which, strangely, changed format as I began to achieve success. Landscape, music, romance, overt prurience - I enjoyed scrutinising them all for the benefit of the viewing public. Yet my own series, ‘Television Tips and Techniques’, remains lamentably un-aired and scripts for “The Weaker Head” gather dust in the cabinet beside me as I write. A kind enquiry - perhaps the opportunity will arise again before long.
For those of you wishing to submit your essays on Abstractional Nihilism in Pre-Nubian Literature, I’m afraid the deadline has now passed.
With warmest regards
Vernon Thornycroft
First foray into this particular domain, but it makes sense, and I’m sure all my continuing correspondents will appreciate having unbridled access to the horse’s mouth, as it were.
Those expecting a first treatise on my current work “Solecistic Deliberation Within Academic Conceptualisation” will be disappointed. This worthy tome remains in a state of limbo - pressures from without have distracted, delayed and damaged what progress I had hoped to make these past few months. Pressure not least from my work for the shadow National Gasometer Collection.
This august body, whose council I was invited to join some years ago, has been making unprecedented demands on our time. As you will know, the sNGC exists to preserve our nation’s gas-holding heritage, and we have amassed over 30 dismantled examples of Britain’s most notable gasometers ready for exhibition at an appropriate site. Following rejection by the Duke of Devonshire to house this magnificent collection on the banks of his lake at Chatsworth House in the Peak District, I and my fellow council members have been exploring and enquiring after every possible location before these ageing and impressive behemoths turn to rust.
My own personal contacts in the world of academe have not borne fruit. Other than an intriguing suggestion that Keele University be levelled to create a space for something educational, and an adventurous proposal from the Faculty of Astronomy at Imperial College that several be adapted to replicate the atmospheric conditions of a selection of the larger planetary satellites, little has been achieved. The likelihood of the latter is tenuous in the extreme, and a shame too: who would not jump at the opportunity to enjoy a lungful of whatever they’re breathing on Io, Europa, Titan and Triton these days?
A colleague on the council, the Rev. Ignatius Lumpopo, is also having trouble trying to convince Lambeth Palace that a number of redundant or misused ecclesiastical premises be razed in order to accommodate the Collection. The love Ignatius has of gasometers is well-documented, yet I fear that his passion and exuberance may have rubbed the Synod up the wrong way. His proposal that Ridley Hall be demolished to accommodate the collection on Granta Place did not go down well with the Cambridge authorities: “We’ve only just sorted out the swans - now they want to infest the place with effing gasometers” was the response from The Rev. Adrian Tompkins ThM, PhD, MA, Lecturer in Old Testament Deconstructivism and Ethics.
So I appeal to readers for suggestions - remember, the Collection needs to be placed close to an expanse of water. This would also afford a suitable venue wherein the Collection may operate “Indisputable”, its rare Edwardian coal-fired LPG tanker which, for some reason, is the only example still in existence.
A correspondent asked me recently whether I would ever consider appearing on the television again. For those of you unfamiliar with my work on the small screen, some years ago I enjoyed exploring obscure and overlooked cinema on behalf of viewers on ‘Bravo’, a channel which, strangely, changed format as I began to achieve success. Landscape, music, romance, overt prurience - I enjoyed scrutinising them all for the benefit of the viewing public. Yet my own series, ‘Television Tips and Techniques’, remains lamentably un-aired and scripts for “The Weaker Head” gather dust in the cabinet beside me as I write. A kind enquiry - perhaps the opportunity will arise again before long.
For those of you wishing to submit your essays on Abstractional Nihilism in Pre-Nubian Literature, I’m afraid the deadline has now passed.
With warmest regards
Vernon Thornycroft
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