Hello there
Apologies for having been absent for so long. My work on substantive abstraction in nihilism remains as time-consuming as ever. As the forlorn academic Bernie McArdle once complained, I am so in danger of discovering increasingly more about less and less that I shall soon know absolutely everything about nothing whatsoever (I paraphrase: McArdle’s gorse-sharp Ulster diction was, of course, peppered with profanity). But isn’t knowing everything about nothing the goal of an abstractional nihilist?
I am always impressed with the entrepreneurial spirit demonstrated by some of the most unlikely people. For reasons I do not intend to go into here, I regularly renew my acquaintance with one such person, Miss Maureen Bosomworth, of Bury in Lancashire. Maureen is a vibrant 25-year-old whose appearance and deportment exude confidence in an ostentatious, ‘urban’ way. Petite and, this week, sporting a shock of bubbly blonde hair, she is also extremely wealthy - through a simple scheme she has developed, named “Hindsight”. We all know the benefit of hindsight but, in her scheme, she has taken the literal sense of the word to describe a fashion advice service she now runs in the north west of England.
Maureen, herself quite a “looker”, hit on the notion that if we could have a persistent reminder of how we look, we would maintain higher standards of dress and presentation. As you will imagine, even I add a second or two to any glances I may make into a mirror on my way out - like all of us, I like to know that my appearance is attractive, both to myself and anyone I may wish to influence. Maureen sees self-esteem as a desirable commodity.
‘Hindsight’ is a service of clandestine video-filming, which provides a powerful stimulus for standards of personal presentation to be maintained. A typical scenario would be the candidate, electing to ‘pop out to the shops’, grabs whatever coat is handy and, wearing it over house clothes, makes her way into town. Maureen’s team of ex-night club bouncers, retired military policemen and redundant television news cameramen jump out of the unmarked van parked outside the candidate’s house and, using the latest in miniature video recording equipment, follow and surreptitiously film her progress. Later, the team edit the footage and send it on DVD - either anonymously, or perhaps as a gift from a well-meaning friend - to the candidate. Photographs can also be provided.
The reaction of candidates to seeing themselves is usually a profound one. Dreadful hairstyles, ill-fitting and tasteless garments, little if any indication of cosmetic attention and, above all, the sheer girth of hitherto ignored hind quarters usually elicits a torrid response. In addition to the aforementioned staff, the van also contains a psychotherapist, cardiac response unit and legal staff versed in both assault and divorce proceedings.
Few candidates elect to buy the service themselves.
If a candidate does retain the confidence to discuss the revelations further, Maureen’s staff are unusually competent at dissuading further action - other than investment in mirrors, make-up or a dietary plan.
‘Hindsight’ is proving lucrative in the backstreets of greater Manchester and Maureen has plans to expand (the business) across other urban areas of the United Kingdom. Disillusioned husbands and office colleagues, tired of having paperwork blown out of windows as the candidate walks along a corridor, are proving to be enthusiastic purchasers of the ‘Hindsight’ gift package.
Quite why I am telling you this I don’t know. Perhaps the notion of knowing too much about something made me think of Maureen.
With warmest regards
Vernon Thornycroft
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
Monday, 22 November 2010
On Innovation
Hello There
I have just passed an arduous train journey in the genial company of Sir Arthur Cresswood, who recently retired as chairman of the National Rail Rolling Stock Procurement Design Panel. Sir Arthur is a wonderful raconteur, whose tales of locomotive and carriage design deserve a wider audience. With funding now withdrawn, his team is recently disbanded but, as Sir Arthur notes (and as the cab of the new class 70 diesel locomotive attests), no-one paid any attention to its work anyway.
As our journey progressed, he reminisced on what would have been his crowning achievement, the Internally-Navigated Express Passenger Train. In 1979, his team was approached to develop a solution to the age-old problem of trains being delayed by problems on the track ahead. The team’s mission was to create a train that would identify forthcoming traffic and track conditions and, as necessary, control the system so as to divert itself yet still achieve its next destination on time. IT infrastructure on the railways is very advanced, so the train would use its computer to read conditions and, when a viable alternative was available, reset both its own and related signalling across the network to re-route itself accordingly. For example, an Internally-Navigated Express Passenger Train running non-stop from Liverpool Street to Norwich, detecting a potential delay at Colchester, would identify an alternative, clearer route via Bishops Stortford and Ely.
Making all routes available for diversion was essential to the success of the project yet few tracks meet main line standards: the Internally-Navigated Express Passenger Train had to be designed with this in mind. Greater distances imply proportionately later arrivals, so the specification demanded an increased availability in speed of up to 250% over tracks normally limited to slower running. This could be achieved by an average axle weight of under 8 tonnes, plus larger flanges and a GPS-controlled tilt system, to enable the train to negotiate poorly-ballasted, tight-radius track at speeds in excess of 120kph. The prime concern was weight.
Sir Arthur’s solution was innovative, to say the least. He was to build the Internally-Navigated Express Passenger Train out of lithium, the lightest metal in the universe. The malleability of Lithium 5 offered an engineering bonus but its corrosive effects a drawback, so highly radioactive Lithium-6-deuteride was chosen. Sir Arthur immediately turned the fatal shortcomings of this alloy to the train’s advantage, electing to use its nuclear fission to power it. Eight coaches of radioactive lithium would produce virtually limitless power, yet thanks to a favourable half-life and because journey time would (usually) be reduced significantly, the duration passengers would be exposed to the deadly radiation came within loosely acceptable parameters.
Slowly transforming into beryllium and emitting an attractive red glow as it raced through the night, the Internally-Navigated Express Passenger Train offered many beneficial extras. The medicinal effects of the lithium were anticipated to raise passengers’ mental well-being en route. A pantograph would return excess power to the network when running on electrified lines: on non-electrified lines, the power would be converted to heat which would be convected downwards to burn off weed growth and litter, and sterilise the track bed.
A rheumy twinkle appeared in Sir Arthur’s eyes. Our own journey was reaching its tortured end and, as he took his umbrella from the overhead rack, he sighed.
Even all those years ago, Sir Arthur Cresswood had foreseen that the defining phrase for British rail passenger transport development in the 21st century would be ‘INEPT’.
With warmest regards
Vernon Thorncroft
I have just passed an arduous train journey in the genial company of Sir Arthur Cresswood, who recently retired as chairman of the National Rail Rolling Stock Procurement Design Panel. Sir Arthur is a wonderful raconteur, whose tales of locomotive and carriage design deserve a wider audience. With funding now withdrawn, his team is recently disbanded but, as Sir Arthur notes (and as the cab of the new class 70 diesel locomotive attests), no-one paid any attention to its work anyway.
As our journey progressed, he reminisced on what would have been his crowning achievement, the Internally-Navigated Express Passenger Train. In 1979, his team was approached to develop a solution to the age-old problem of trains being delayed by problems on the track ahead. The team’s mission was to create a train that would identify forthcoming traffic and track conditions and, as necessary, control the system so as to divert itself yet still achieve its next destination on time. IT infrastructure on the railways is very advanced, so the train would use its computer to read conditions and, when a viable alternative was available, reset both its own and related signalling across the network to re-route itself accordingly. For example, an Internally-Navigated Express Passenger Train running non-stop from Liverpool Street to Norwich, detecting a potential delay at Colchester, would identify an alternative, clearer route via Bishops Stortford and Ely.
Making all routes available for diversion was essential to the success of the project yet few tracks meet main line standards: the Internally-Navigated Express Passenger Train had to be designed with this in mind. Greater distances imply proportionately later arrivals, so the specification demanded an increased availability in speed of up to 250% over tracks normally limited to slower running. This could be achieved by an average axle weight of under 8 tonnes, plus larger flanges and a GPS-controlled tilt system, to enable the train to negotiate poorly-ballasted, tight-radius track at speeds in excess of 120kph. The prime concern was weight.
Sir Arthur’s solution was innovative, to say the least. He was to build the Internally-Navigated Express Passenger Train out of lithium, the lightest metal in the universe. The malleability of Lithium 5 offered an engineering bonus but its corrosive effects a drawback, so highly radioactive Lithium-6-deuteride was chosen. Sir Arthur immediately turned the fatal shortcomings of this alloy to the train’s advantage, electing to use its nuclear fission to power it. Eight coaches of radioactive lithium would produce virtually limitless power, yet thanks to a favourable half-life and because journey time would (usually) be reduced significantly, the duration passengers would be exposed to the deadly radiation came within loosely acceptable parameters.
Slowly transforming into beryllium and emitting an attractive red glow as it raced through the night, the Internally-Navigated Express Passenger Train offered many beneficial extras. The medicinal effects of the lithium were anticipated to raise passengers’ mental well-being en route. A pantograph would return excess power to the network when running on electrified lines: on non-electrified lines, the power would be converted to heat which would be convected downwards to burn off weed growth and litter, and sterilise the track bed.
A rheumy twinkle appeared in Sir Arthur’s eyes. Our own journey was reaching its tortured end and, as he took his umbrella from the overhead rack, he sighed.
Even all those years ago, Sir Arthur Cresswood had foreseen that the defining phrase for British rail passenger transport development in the 21st century would be ‘INEPT’.
With warmest regards
Vernon Thorncroft
Friday, 6 August 2010
On Minimalism
Hello There
Despite appearances, I am a keen advocate of the ‘less is more’ principle, as expounded by Mies van der Rohe, the well-known minimalist architect. Minimalism ranges across all the arts but who, I wonder, is the most minimal minimalist?
I was pleasantly surprised recently to come across a pamphlet devoted to the works of Paulus Niets, the Dutch minimalist artist. Those who understood Niets knew that his devotion to exploring the limits of minimalism was intense, and although he lived amidst its more recognised exponents (such as Gerrit Rietveld, the architect and furniture designer) Niets was not a member of the de Stijl movement. Indeed, he eschewed membership of any organisation that might be perceived as of use in his efforts to gain recognition. He considered that it would only be by achieving a total lack of recognition that he could attain the ultimate success as a minimalist he always craved.
For example, the Rietveld Schröder house at 50 Prins Hendriklaan in Utrecht retains its iconic status to this day. Niets, literally in Rietveld’s shadow, designed and erected a telegraph pole on the pavement opposite. Yet Nietsian philosophy determines that limited transience of a work is pivotal to successful minimalism - it argues that time is as valid a dimension as any of the others in which a work exists. So, like most of Niets’ work, the telegraph pole, which he sculpted from meringue, is now gone. It achieved his minimalist aims.
The later work of Paulus Niets examines this subtraction of dimension, and following his two dimensional ‘line’ series came the ‘dot’ series in which Niets struggled with working in one dimension only. As he remarked in 1978, “We can only appreciate one dimension by using another to view it. A three-dimensional sculpture can only be appreciated by using a fourth dimension - time - to travel around it. A two-dimensional image can only be appreciated by using a third - distance - to view it. The quintessential goal for a minimalist such as I, therefore, is to create successful art in no dimension whatsoever”.
Around this time Paulus Niets paid a visit to his surrealist friend Felix von Hodermayer in the mist-wraithed flatlands of the eastern Netherlands. Von Hodermayer had also been struggling with his work and several weeks before Niets’ arrival had completed his final piece ‘Onnodiggrootlederbank’, an ironic sculpture appraising the principles of Scandinavian furniture design of the 1970s. On entering the studio, Niets discovered the dead body of his friend recumbent on the sculpture, holding a final note stating that ‘Onnodiggrootlederbank’ had “drained [him] of the very force that drove [him]”. Von Hodermayer himself had drained a large bottle of Boosma gin during the course of his demise*.
The loss of his friend had a profound effect on Paulus Niets. He immediately reviewed his rationale and decided to take the subtraction of dimension even further, by working in the first negative dimension. This, he surmised, could only ever be perceived in no dimension and therefore needed not to be done. The very thought of a work would be creation enough, and subsequent reference of it to any potential audience would suffice. No reference would be even better.
For this reason, Paulus Niets continued his very successful career producing no work whatsoever until his death in 2002 at the age of 103. By definition, none of his work survives.
Paulus Niets is the ultimate minimalist.
With warmest regards
Vernon Thornycroft
*An exhibition of the subversive sculptures of Felix von Hodermayer, sponsored by the anarchic Ostnedelandse Kunstradd, is currently touring art galleries in the north of England.
Despite appearances, I am a keen advocate of the ‘less is more’ principle, as expounded by Mies van der Rohe, the well-known minimalist architect. Minimalism ranges across all the arts but who, I wonder, is the most minimal minimalist?
I was pleasantly surprised recently to come across a pamphlet devoted to the works of Paulus Niets, the Dutch minimalist artist. Those who understood Niets knew that his devotion to exploring the limits of minimalism was intense, and although he lived amidst its more recognised exponents (such as Gerrit Rietveld, the architect and furniture designer) Niets was not a member of the de Stijl movement. Indeed, he eschewed membership of any organisation that might be perceived as of use in his efforts to gain recognition. He considered that it would only be by achieving a total lack of recognition that he could attain the ultimate success as a minimalist he always craved.
For example, the Rietveld Schröder house at 50 Prins Hendriklaan in Utrecht retains its iconic status to this day. Niets, literally in Rietveld’s shadow, designed and erected a telegraph pole on the pavement opposite. Yet Nietsian philosophy determines that limited transience of a work is pivotal to successful minimalism - it argues that time is as valid a dimension as any of the others in which a work exists. So, like most of Niets’ work, the telegraph pole, which he sculpted from meringue, is now gone. It achieved his minimalist aims.
The later work of Paulus Niets examines this subtraction of dimension, and following his two dimensional ‘line’ series came the ‘dot’ series in which Niets struggled with working in one dimension only. As he remarked in 1978, “We can only appreciate one dimension by using another to view it. A three-dimensional sculpture can only be appreciated by using a fourth dimension - time - to travel around it. A two-dimensional image can only be appreciated by using a third - distance - to view it. The quintessential goal for a minimalist such as I, therefore, is to create successful art in no dimension whatsoever”.
Around this time Paulus Niets paid a visit to his surrealist friend Felix von Hodermayer in the mist-wraithed flatlands of the eastern Netherlands. Von Hodermayer had also been struggling with his work and several weeks before Niets’ arrival had completed his final piece ‘Onnodiggrootlederbank’, an ironic sculpture appraising the principles of Scandinavian furniture design of the 1970s. On entering the studio, Niets discovered the dead body of his friend recumbent on the sculpture, holding a final note stating that ‘Onnodiggrootlederbank’ had “drained [him] of the very force that drove [him]”. Von Hodermayer himself had drained a large bottle of Boosma gin during the course of his demise*.
The loss of his friend had a profound effect on Paulus Niets. He immediately reviewed his rationale and decided to take the subtraction of dimension even further, by working in the first negative dimension. This, he surmised, could only ever be perceived in no dimension and therefore needed not to be done. The very thought of a work would be creation enough, and subsequent reference of it to any potential audience would suffice. No reference would be even better.
For this reason, Paulus Niets continued his very successful career producing no work whatsoever until his death in 2002 at the age of 103. By definition, none of his work survives.
Paulus Niets is the ultimate minimalist.
With warmest regards
Vernon Thornycroft
*An exhibition of the subversive sculptures of Felix von Hodermayer, sponsored by the anarchic Ostnedelandse Kunstradd, is currently touring art galleries in the north of England.
Friday, 23 July 2010
On The Radio
Hello There
Although you may know me from my television appearances, I am occasionally asked about the short time I spent working in radio. This was many years ago, and I was a much younger man - a teenager, even. In an exceptional display of rebellion (a trait I now understand to be surprisingly commonplace in young people) I selectively absconded from lectures at University for almost an entire year, to work on a boat. I say selectively because I managed to continue my studies without interruption and convince my lecturers that I was still a regular attendee. I discovered later that this was because my contribution to lectures on the one week in three I did attend was considered so overwhelmingly intense that the tutors were still reeling from my presence over a fortnight later. I was awarded a double First by the end of my second year for the same reason.
So why one week in three, and why a boat?
Well, this was the mid-sixties and that rebellious streak coupled with my interest in contemporary music prompted me to apply for a job on one of the pirate radio stations that were springing up around our sceptred isle at the time. In March 1966 I joined “The Big V” - “setting The Wash alight on 288 metres” -, admittedly not one of the biggest pirates, but receivable in Cambridge, where my programme “Tad Ventura’s Spin Cycle” developed an eclectic following. I loathed being ‘Tad Ventura’ but station management were keen to pursue a transatlantic presentation style. Fortunately, even though my clipped English tones were as pure then as they are now, the epithet created a welcome anonymity which has sustained me within the corridors of academe ever since.
They were heady days.
Every third Wednesday we would set sail from King’s Lynn on a two hour voyage to the MV Dysnomia, a converted coastal freighter anchored off the Norfolk coast, to spend the next fortnight tossing on the heaving swell of a cheerless North Sea and playing records. Sea-sickness was not a problem for me although my shipmates did tend to succumb to it, usually whilst I was on the air. Despite my particular programme (or "show") being scheduled between the pre-recorded tirades of two American evangelists, I did have followers of my own. “Tad Ventura’s Spin Cycle” was special in that it featured music that hadn’t quite made it into the Hit Parade and nor was ever likely to. Yet as with all things, this music had unique qualities which I spent my time analysing in depth. Although many provincial listeners didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, I regularly received letters from London - often from the musicians whose discs I had featured, or perhaps their legal representatives.
I left "The Big V" in January 1967 when, inexplicably, I was taken to Esjberg* in Denmark rather than King’s Lynn. Fortunately time is a great healer. I still have my ‘Big V’ promotional pac-a-mac and, as you’ll remember, I thrive on the profound scrutiny of popular music.
I listened recently to an interview on the radio in which the African singer Youssou N’dour spoke about his new reggae-style album which he recorded in order to raise awareness of the continuing problem of malaria.
On "The Big V", I would have announced it as someone from the Mali area using music from the Marley era to sing about Malaria.
Heady days indeed.
With warmest regards
Vernon Thornycroft
*To be precise, the life-raft blew ashore at Fanø Bugt, several miles to the south.
Although you may know me from my television appearances, I am occasionally asked about the short time I spent working in radio. This was many years ago, and I was a much younger man - a teenager, even. In an exceptional display of rebellion (a trait I now understand to be surprisingly commonplace in young people) I selectively absconded from lectures at University for almost an entire year, to work on a boat. I say selectively because I managed to continue my studies without interruption and convince my lecturers that I was still a regular attendee. I discovered later that this was because my contribution to lectures on the one week in three I did attend was considered so overwhelmingly intense that the tutors were still reeling from my presence over a fortnight later. I was awarded a double First by the end of my second year for the same reason.
So why one week in three, and why a boat?
Well, this was the mid-sixties and that rebellious streak coupled with my interest in contemporary music prompted me to apply for a job on one of the pirate radio stations that were springing up around our sceptred isle at the time. In March 1966 I joined “The Big V” - “setting The Wash alight on 288 metres” -, admittedly not one of the biggest pirates, but receivable in Cambridge, where my programme “Tad Ventura’s Spin Cycle” developed an eclectic following. I loathed being ‘Tad Ventura’ but station management were keen to pursue a transatlantic presentation style. Fortunately, even though my clipped English tones were as pure then as they are now, the epithet created a welcome anonymity which has sustained me within the corridors of academe ever since.
They were heady days.
Every third Wednesday we would set sail from King’s Lynn on a two hour voyage to the MV Dysnomia, a converted coastal freighter anchored off the Norfolk coast, to spend the next fortnight tossing on the heaving swell of a cheerless North Sea and playing records. Sea-sickness was not a problem for me although my shipmates did tend to succumb to it, usually whilst I was on the air. Despite my particular programme (or "show") being scheduled between the pre-recorded tirades of two American evangelists, I did have followers of my own. “Tad Ventura’s Spin Cycle” was special in that it featured music that hadn’t quite made it into the Hit Parade and nor was ever likely to. Yet as with all things, this music had unique qualities which I spent my time analysing in depth. Although many provincial listeners didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, I regularly received letters from London - often from the musicians whose discs I had featured, or perhaps their legal representatives.
I left "The Big V" in January 1967 when, inexplicably, I was taken to Esjberg* in Denmark rather than King’s Lynn. Fortunately time is a great healer. I still have my ‘Big V’ promotional pac-a-mac and, as you’ll remember, I thrive on the profound scrutiny of popular music.
I listened recently to an interview on the radio in which the African singer Youssou N’dour spoke about his new reggae-style album which he recorded in order to raise awareness of the continuing problem of malaria.
On "The Big V", I would have announced it as someone from the Mali area using music from the Marley era to sing about Malaria.
Heady days indeed.
With warmest regards
Vernon Thornycroft
*To be precise, the life-raft blew ashore at Fanø Bugt, several miles to the south.
Thursday, 24 June 2010
On Colour
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.
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.
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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