The Death Clock is ticking

Like others before me, I became fascinated with the Death Clock. So fascinated, in fact, that I cashed in some of my increasingly precious seconds in order to feed the clock various data and thus discover what differences would result.

As a non-smoking male, who is only a bit overweight, my life expectancy is about 73 years. Barring accident and major illness, I have 25 years of life left in me. Were I a woman, I would live longer. Were I to smoke or gain weight, I would die sooner.

I was disappointed that, according to the Death Clock, there is nothing I can do to lengthen my allotted three score years and thirteen, other than (I suppose) submit myself to a sex change operation. I should have thought that my strictly vegan diet, whilst not limited to rice and lentils, ought to count for something in time credits. That I have for the time being given up drinking alcohol (supposedly for a Lent detox: I have been dry now since the end of January 2005) would suggest I deserved the addition of an extra year or two to my quota, but I read somewhere (or more likely heard it on the radio) that people who drink no alcohol live shorter lives than people who drink in spinster-restrained moderation. According to the Death Clock, losing weight would make a difference only were I to weigh more than I currently weigh.

I guess that the Death Clock algorithm (calculation) is based on insurance tables. I wonder how country-specific it is. Does it include statistics from parts of the world that are economically under-developed, where life expectancy is shorter than in the west? Assuming that the Death Clock makes its calculations from data drawn from within and beyond the US, I guess that it averages out regional variations that led to shorter life-spans, say, in Karelia (Finland) and Glasgow (Scotland). The Death Clock takes no specific account of inherited illnesses and genetic legacies; diet and exercise (other than their impact on body weight - in Karelia, whilst the lumberjacks were very fit, their high-dairy diet was packed so full of saturated fats that they died young of heart attacks caused by clogged arteries); or of compromised heath and safety at work. Obviously I am taking the Death Clock more seriously than the purpose for which it was intended.

How, then, should I respond to the Death Clock? Several thoughts occur. First, regardless of its accuracy regarding my own lifespan, the Death Clock is ticking, and at some point in the future my pockets will be empty of coins with which to feed the meter. Game over. I should like to explore the meaning of 'game over' on another occasion. The consequence, however, is that, as the seconds of my life tick away, I have perpetual opportunity to determine how to live my life. This is not to suggest that I am 'free to do anything I like'. It is, however, to suggest that I can re-evaluate my priorities and do more of my choosing. I should like to explore this on another occasion.

Second, despite its apparent bluntness as a predictive tool, the Death Clock serves as a reminder that my health and well-being are my responsibility that I can choose to accept or deny as I wish. There is much that I know about my health, and I often choose to act on this knowledge (for instance, I eat lots of fruit and vegetables; I have intentionally reduced my body weight; I have, for the time being, cut out drinking alcohol). However, I also make choices that are based on ignorance (for instance, I have only just found out that Teflon-type coatings are carcinogenic) or self-deception (for instance, I know that I ought to exercise much more than I do; I know that fried food is significantly less healthy than raw or boiled food, and yet I tell myself that it is not too bad; I still eat far too much salt). I should like to explore this on another occasion.

Third, whilst it may appear self-evident in 21st century western society that I should wish to maximise the length of my life, my preference is for my quality of life to remain high. I am not keen on the prospect of years of terminal decline (physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual) into a low-quality, meaningless existence serving neither myself nor anybody else. I should like to explore several issue around this on another occasion.

Game over
I recently watched a movie (Random Hearts, starring Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott-Thomas) in which an airliner flying from Washington to Miami crashes into the sea. The people on board are killed, their existence suddenly, unexpectedly, prematurely extinguished. Their game was over: no more moves to make, no more sights to drink in, no more food to savour, no more music to enjoy, no more hopes and expectations, no more love. (To be continued ...)

Question Time, BBC TV (2)

19:00 Thursday 21 April 2005, Gala Theatre, Durham City, UK

Waiting here is like waiting in an airport departure lounge for the announcement that signals the start of boarding . The 150 or so passengers are crowded into the upper bar area of the theatre. We range in age from mid-teens to mid-sixties; dress, grooming and accent signal social status (working class and middle class); there are lots of students, as well as housewives and businessmen; but we are almost exclusively white. David Dimbleby said that there are more men than women, but I can't say that the disparity is particularly noticeable. Prior to his pep talk we were busy. People were busy greeting friends; busy writing proposed questions onto cards; busy munching (non-vegan) sandwiches; busy swigging glasses of orange juice as though the drink contained vodka. A distressingly high proportion standing out on the balcony polluting the wonderfully golden evening air with foul tobacco smoke. Alone and hungry, I felt isolated as I sipped my instant coffee and devised cunning questions.
While he was talking, holding us in rapt attention, I wondered how such an alert man coped with delivering, week after week, polished, efficient, competent warm-up lines to crowds of weakly or selectively informed people who know only how to grind axes and bang drums. I enjoy being in the presence of a person who is informed, or a person with insight. I recall workshops with the poet Jon Silkin that left me feeling as though fire were running through my arteries.
Now there is expectation and apprehension. It is time to enter the studio-cum-auditorium. Cables lie draped and strewn like vines in a jungle. Television cameras the size of velociraptors come to life.
Whose questions will be chosen? A name is read out, and the person asked to identify themselves. A quip. Another person. Another quip. Down the list. Surely there is still space for my question. And then my name. No-one’s bothered, except that it feels like a chasm has opened around me. I leave my jacket on the bench seat and climb self-consciously down the stairs, joining the others whose questions have been selected.
In fact, my question was never requested. I felt bitterly disappointed, because I really wanted the question to be asked, as well as being given the opportunity to ask it. The issue remains live for me even today. However, I did get to make an 'audience comment' that was gently derogatory towards the Tories regarding their cynical whipping up of suspicion about so-called 'bogus asylum seekers'.

... to be continued...

Question Time, BBC TV

I am typing this in Durham's Clayport Library, the first time that I have posted my weblog from anywhere other than home, and a small aspect of the strength of a weblog. Although there are many topics about which I am currently writing on which the digital sun is not yet shining, I feel gravitationally pulled towards recording these moments in close-to-real-time. This evening, for only the second time, Question Time, the prime current affairs vox pop television programme is being recorded in Durham, UK. Hosted by David Dimbleby, one of the foremost presenters in BBC television, the panel of politicians who will be responding to questions put by the audience will include Baronness Shirley Williams, an inspirational Liberal Democrat grandee; Robin Cook (MP), now a maverick, but former Foreign Secretary in Tony Blair's Labour government; Jean Lambert (MEP), one of the most widely known spokespeople for the Green Party; and William Hague (MP), a former leader of the Conservative Party. I feel very excited by such a heavyweight line-up. I almost always watch Question Time, and feel involved with both the issues addressed and the format of the programme (I note my reluctance to term it a 'show', the term used by David Dimbleby). The UK is entering the final fortnight of political campaigning for the forthcoming general election - the second defence of the Blair government. (The Labour Party has never won a third consecutive term.) Over the past few days questions that I might ask have been screaming, Le Mans style, around in my head. I would love to ask Shirley Williams to hold up a banner for regional democracy. I would love to hear some defence of negative political campaigning. I should enjoy making William Hague squirm regarding the racist rhetoric of the Conservative Party concerning immigration and asylum-seekers. However, the question that I am burning to ask is about the high court decision to grant doctors permission to allow Charlotte Wyatt to die - against the wishes of her parents. I have tried out different angles, and the one that both appeals to me and has the emotional poignancy to make it less boring is: "In the 1960s, the UK legal system finally turned its back on the judicial killing of adults. Is it right that a judge can now permit doctors, against the clearly expressed wishes of the child's parents, to allow Charlotte Wyatt to die when the child could live? Surely it is a child's parents, not doctors, who are best able to determine quality of life? What has happened to the principle of informed consent?" I feel intensely passionate about this because, under the same principle, Jemima, my daughter, who endured similar circumstances, could have been left to die, and is alive today only because of extended intensive interventions, including rescuscitation. Despite her multiple disabilities, the quality of life of my daughter has been nurtured and grown by her parents. In my morality, neither medical nor legal people should ever remove responsibility from a person (or their guardians) about when that person dies. What I have written applies equally to Terry Schiavo.

Doing stuff in the night

15 April 2005: Doing stuff in the night

It is about four in the dark well of the night. The world around me is asleep. Being April, the sky will be lightless, and the ground will remain in darkness, for some hours. I can hear rain slapping against the windows. A wintery wind is whipping the newly-budded trees in the garden. I feel unsettled and restless. I need paid work. I am also uneasy about being awake. I have been up, doing stuff (tidying, cleaning, housekeeping my e-mail) for the past couple of hours. I get anxiety attacks, adrenaline rushes, but not panic attacks - that is a path important for me to avoid. I wish I could cope more easily with change. Gizzajob. My services are no longer required at the place where I have been working for the past four years. I am being let go, made redundant, sacked. I was doing okay, but am now surplus to requirements. As a consequence I feel demoralised and depressed. Go on, gizzajob. The date on which my counselling work was to have ended passed a fortnight ago. The new people have been selected, appointed, and are currently being negotiated with. I have been allowed to stay on until the new people start work. I feel rather pathetic. Gizzajob. I have no firm plans, no leads, no irons in the fire, nothing in the pipeline. My chess pieces are not in a fighting formation, and I have been racking my brain to calculate how to move my king out of check. Do I look for a similar kind of job to the one that I have had for the past four years, or should I try to build up a portfolio of part-time contracts? At what stage do I decide that I have no option but to apply to work the telephone lines in a call centre or stack shelves in a supermarket? I have been scouring the job advertisements for some indication that I am employable, but the words in the advertisements seem not to register, as though written in some foreign script. Kind souls have recruited themselves to support me in my job quest, keeping their eyes peeled for job vacancies. In the meantime, I am sliding inexorably towards the lip of an abyss. However, despite my obvious awareness of the situation, along with being awake half the night, I also appear to be in denial, and cannot take in the horrific reality that the ground is just about to give way to empty space.

Skilled?

07:30 Tuesday 8 March 2005, home: Skilled?

This is my first attempt at posting to my weblog by e-mail. Being sceptical about anything much going right at present, I am merely sending the e-mail from the laptop that I am borrowing. However, if this process works, I shall try composing and sending an e-mail directly from my cellphone. It would give me some innocent/infantile satisfaction to post to my weblog from the car while held up in a traffic jam. It occurs to me, too, that I could browse my weblog from me cellphone. I am so slow to arrive at what is so obvious.

As I sit here furiously typing away before dashing from the house in order to arrive just on time at the workplace that will soon no longer be my workplace, I am feeling deeply touched that, in response to my earlier posting, Saije has expressed concern. There is, for me, something most strange about a stranger making a relational/emotional connection. Of course, this is what I do in my job: as a counsellor, I make relational/emotional connections with lots of strangers. However, I am rarely a recipient of this process. I feel supported by the experience.

In terms of work, a job perhaps, I feel as lost as ever. Working as a counsellor, knowing that I am at least passably good at what I do, I find counselling a fulfilling activity. I know that I am good at making relationships with strangers that are therapeutic for them. However, outside the counselling room, in the cold light of economic reality, what good is that skill? It may well be a skill transferable to other jobs and activities, but only in the context of those activities, such as social work, careers advice, youth engagement work

I know that I have some familiarity with computers. However, I cannot, in all truth, extend "familiarity" to "competence", not in terms of the job market. The truth is, outside the counselling (and counselling training) room, I am no more qualified, skilled or able than John Doe and Joe Soap. Therefore, unless I can find a counselling job, I shall be thrown to the lions of supermarkets and telephone call centres - not an appealing prospect.

Is this free-fall?

7 March 2005: Is this free-fall?

Last Thursday (3 March 2005) I realised that I shall be out of work at the end of the month, with no identifiable prospects. Until then, I had not grasped that my work, counselling for the City of Sunderland, was over. Whilst I knew last year that the work I have been doing for the past four years would put out to tender, I was told not to worry, that I would be looked after. I had understood that the work was to be restructured. I knew in January 2005 that details of the tender were to be made available in mid- to late February 2005, and was told that the apprehension I expressed was misplaced. I was prepared for less favourable conditions. However, looking at the tender details for the first time last Thursday evening, I saw that the tender is geared solely towards medium and large businesses to supply the workers, and not towards sole traders. I am now extremely worried. I have not one shred of hope of being able to complete the documentation: the level of complexity is way beyond anything imaginable. On reflection, it feels as though I have been strung along for month after month. I should have been looking for alternative work. If only I had known. I feel bitterly disappointed, and betrayed by people I trusted. To whom do I look now? Where do I turn? How can I find work? I have a family and a mortgage. I need an income, a living, but do not know how to start the process of finding suitable work. I feel as though my confidence and competence have been drained from me. I feel disempowered. As I woke this morning, I knew immediately and instinctively that I am in danger of sinking into a depression. To be precise, it feels like I am in the process of stumbling over the edge of a cliff. Everything is in slow motion. The solid ground on which I was standing is now moving away. I am falling into a void. "Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts. We shall encounter some turbulence as we enter free fall."

Singel in Springtime. I took several photographs of the Singel canal behind the hotel in which we were staying on Spui. I loved the intensity of the colours; the sense that Spring had just crept in overnight, under the cover of darkness; and the stillness of the scene, which is reflected in the stillness of the water.

Kroller Muller sculpture garden near Apeldoorn. The Kroller Muller museum at Hoghe Velouw [check spelling] near Apeldoorn in the eastern Netherlands, is one of the most rewarding art galleries and sculpture gardens I have ever visited. In particular, the gallery houses a substantial collection of works of art by Vincent van Gogh in which it is possible to experience van Gogh's compassion, his exuberance and his ability that I have always taken for granted when viewing his most famous works of art displayed in various national galleries. The Kroller Muller has other collections too, including sculptural works by such artists as Giacometti, as well as staging exhibitions. The scupture garden is both important and a delight to walk round (including with a camera!). Unmissable.

Springtime at Keukenhof Gardens. I first heard about this World Heritage Site when most of my family of origin visited it early in the 1970s. I had thought that it would be just a load of flowering bulbs. It is, in fact, one of the most beautiful places in the world in Springtime, and I am a richer person for having visited.

Hyacinths at Keukenhof Gardens. There is too much to photograph at Keukenhof Gardens. The sumptuousness of these hyacinths, their fleshy substantialness, and the saturated blue of the flowers makes it nearly possible to drink their sweet, floral perfume.

Weighty issues concerning food

4 March 2005: Weighty issues concerning food

Since the start of February I have been trying to reduce my body weight. The issue of weight reduction, so simply expressed, is complicated by a raft of personal and social issues. Preparedness to reduce my weight is dependent on my willingness to admit that I am overweight. Attempting to lose weight requires me to make some lifestyle changes, such as no longer drinking alcohol. Shedding weight is not considered a manly concern: it is not what blokes do. In contrast, most women I know are trying to lose weight: the issue is one that is very much associated with women (Fat is a Feminist Issue). All the same, it would be hard to describe my body shape as sveldte. I would not look out of place at a pub darts match - come to think of it, I have played in pub darts matches! Less wittily, I receive verbal comments and insults on a daily basis regarding my body shape, frequently shouted after me by, although by no means exclusively, young people. I have been physically assaulted in a mild but unpleasant manner twice because of the challenge felt by strangers regarding my body shape: "When's it due?" each asked (15 months apart) while poking me in the stomach. I witness much non-verbal behaviour towards me that indicates the discomfort that some people feel in my presence. I could ignore the abuse and the discomfort of other people, but that would seem both a little dishonest (a pretence would be more accurate), and also a wasted opportunity to invigorate my motivation to lose some weight. Happily, or perhaps sadly, there were more objective criteria as well. With a Body Mass Index of 28, I was closer to the 'obese' portion of 'overweight' than to the 'normal' portion. It was not even that I had pigged out over Christmas and the so-called 'festive season': I was simply slowly though inexorably gaining weight. My blood pressure was consistently high, with a diastolic oscillating between the high nineties and the low teenies, and frequently in the naughties. I believed that, were I to weigh less, my blood pressure would reduce. I was feeling tired quite a lot of the time, making it hard to concentrate on my work. As a response, I tended to use strong coffee to keep me alert during the day, and alcohol in the evening to counteract the stimulant effects of the coffee. I was hoping that a reduction in my weight would give me back some of my natural energy. On Monday 1 February 2005 I weighed myself several times, arriving at a weight somewhere between 94.5 kg and 95 kg. The bathroom scales are not best known for their precision, or even their accuracy. A clutch of readings, averaged, seemed more likely to produce a fair result. It may also be true that, if one is attempting to measure in units of 100g, then a mug of tea and a slice of toast are likely to affect the reading. On Sunday 14 February 2005 I weighed 91.5 kg. On Wednesday 2 March 2005 I weighed 87.9 kg. My body weight has dropped. According to some website I found concerning BMI and other measures of obesity, the BMI of 53% of men my age in the US is higher than mine. Moreover, the same website confidently asserts that social perception would give my ideal weight for my height as 82 kg. I have my doubts. I have three target weights: a) 82 kg - for my height, this weight would give me a BMI that is on the boundary between 'normal' and 'overweight', and I wish this to become a future ceiling; b) 73 kg - this would put my BMI in the middle of 'normal'; c) 63 kg - for my height, this weight would give me a BMI that is on the boundary between 'normal' and 'underweight', and would give me back my 18 year old body shape. I have a long way to go in reducing my weight. I am hoping that there is a good correlation between my weight and my body shape, so I shall no longer be exposed to the taunts and sniggers of total strangers. I know that to appear trimmer I must exercise my tummy muscles. The trouble is that I avoid vigorous tummy exercise because my hiatus hernia objects to it painfully. My supposed diet largely consists of a great deal of fruit, the absence of alcohol, much less starch and slightly smaller portions. I have been trying to walk further and more often as my preferred means of exercise. I started February with a ten day detox: some detox medicine from Tesco's and an abstinence from coffee, the latter of which I have continued. However, in all, my diet does not amount to much. I have a nagging sense of guilt that the diet is not more demanding ("If it isn't hurting, it isn't working.") The thing is, though, it is working. Lots of people have commented on their perception that I have lost weight. Good. Long may my weight loss continue, for I have yet many more kilos to lose.

Welcome back

2 March 2005: Welcome back

Of course I have experienced withdrawal symptoms. It wasn't my fault. Honestly, it wasn't my fault. On Wednesday 16 February 2005, my laptop's hard drive chewed itself into pieces and ascended into hard drive heaven. I am without a credible means of access to the internet. I have paid two arms and three legs to have any uncompromised data from the remaining shards of the deceased hard drive of my now-Golem-like laptop dumped onto DVDs that I cannot read because my laptop requires a hard drive in order to boot up. At present, I can only hope that there is data on the DVDs to be read. I can barely wait to be up and running again with my own computer. The current hiatus does not mean that my writing digits have been idle. I have been writing letters. I am enjoying hand-writing letters. Having taken the plunge to install a wi-fi card on my daughter's low-spec and ponderous laptop, I am now also able to resume writing this weblog. Normal service will not be resumed for several weeks, but it will be better than listening to static - "CQ, CQ, come in."

Learning to use the medium of weblogging

14 February 2005: Learning to use the medium of weblogging

I intend to write this weblog posting in several stages, intermediately saving it as a draft. Although I wish to begin this post now, I have insufficient time to complete it. Further, I wish to learn to feel in control of how I use this medium. It has only just occurred to me that I have access to what I write here only by internet connection: no internet connection, no access. This scares me a little. It is like storing my personal journal in a library in Newcastle. Having expanded my weblogger personal profile, I spent several hours exploring the user profiles of other webloggers with whom I share some or other characteristic. I realised with excitement that thousands of people have made use of this weblogging site. I realised with sadness that many of them posted only once or twice, after which there is nothing but silence. Some people have written nothing more than a personal profile before disappearing. I began to wonder whether I had missed the party. It seemed that everyone packed up and went home immediately after the US presidential election. I realised that, whilst this weblogging site is a virtual town, it has the ambience of a ghost town. I am uncertain how I feel about it all: overwhelmed perhaps. Disappointed? Unprepared. I do not know how much I shall welcome comment. Do I want dialogue? Can I be bothered to get into dialogue? After all, I know none of these people. To what extent can I trust them? When I was searching through the personal profiles, I came across people with profiles showing interests similar to my own, or tastes in film, or tastes in books, or tastes in music. However, I came across no-one whose profile came remotely close to matching my own. My head says to celebrate my uniqueness. My heart says that I am alone. This sense of aloneness was amplified by the relative absence of people my own age. I guess that weblogging is an activity that belongs more to young people. It excited me that, whilst many (a majority from what I was able to discern) of the weblogs are written by people in the US, there are also many written by people from around the world. Not all of the weblogs are written in English. It was wonderful to see weblogs being written in Japanese (hiragana? katakana?), and I felt a little frustrated and ashamed that I was unable to read them. Some of the webloggers present themselves as very strange people, and I suspected that they wish to show themselves as flamboyant and interesting. Other webloggers present themselves as very serious. In this latter group are people who are/were using their blog to record difficult experiences, such as coping with cancer, or coming to terms with a significant bereavement. I scanned the personal profiles of webloggers with interests and preferences similar to my own, systematically following each interest word and each preference word. At first, I believed that I would be able to peek into the weblogs and lives of only those people whose weblogging space was adjacent to my own in one respect or another. Following this train of thought, I considered editing my profile to propose different interests and preferences, and thereby open up new avenues. However, this idea felt dishonest, and motivated by voyeurism. Moreover, I soon realised that I need only take the personal profile of another weblogger to have available a raft of new interests and preferences words to pursue. This procedure felt less voyeuristic, I believe because not dishonest. I experimented with this procedure a few times, but rapidly felt as though I was acting without direction. I scanned the personal profiles of webloggers with interests and preferences similar to my own, systematically following each interest word and each preference word. Some of my interests and preferences words brought up little contact with other webloggers. I noticed how other webloggers expressed their interests and preferences in ways that were likely to attain a longer reach. An obvious example was that some webloggers, I guess largely webloggers in the UK, used not only the word 'counselling', but also the word 'counseling' (the US spelling). I added the word 'counseling' to the interests section of my personal profile, and found the personal profiles of many more webloggers available for scanning. In the favourite films section, I changed 'Coen brothers' to 'Coen', but it made little difference; and I changed 'Woody Allen' to 'Allen', as a result of which a variety of Allen's were being referenced, and I became confused about the personal profiles I was viewing. Some of the interests and preferences words I used in my personal profile were too general, generating endless personal profiles with nothing much in common. Some of my choices were too maverick, generating a small, widely scattered, disparate mix of weblogger personal profiles, again with nothing much in common. I began to realise that I was searching for my tribe. In what ways could I amend my profile so that I may locate and identify my tribe? I added and amended for hours, but came no closer to my goal. Perhaps they are not out there, although surely they must be. As I added and amended the words I used to describe my interests and preferences, I began to think about how other webloggers would view my personal profile. What do the interests and preferences presented in my personal profile say about me? I have no desire to present myself as someone who I am not, neither less than I am nor more than I am. I have neither a wish to hide or dissemble, nor a wish to inflate myself. I wish to give as accurate a picture of myself as I am able. However, like Picasso's stylised use of oil paint in a painting such as Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon, using the medium takes skill, understanding and insight. For example, I was attracted to the inclusion in the personal profiles of some webloggers of their interest 'flying light aircraft'. I have a short history of flying lessons, albeit seven or eight years ago. Although I carry the achievement of those flying lessons around with me as a part of my personal identity, I can no longer, in all honesty, include as an interest 'flying light aircraft'. As an example of a favourite film, I did not include Wolf, because, as a rule, I do not like horror films. The question for me became, what interests and preferences can I present in my personal profile so that other members of my tribe can find me? What I have presented in this weblog posting is accurate, although incomplete. I shall address other issues on another occasion. I have found it valuable to analyse my experiences, for I have achieved the insight of re-knowing that I am searching for my tribe.

Anniversary of the Allied bombing of Dresden

13 February 2005: Anniversary of the Allied bombing of Dresden

For as long as I can remember I have been appalled that British and US military forces could have perpetrated such an horrendous act as the fire-storming of Dresden (13 February 1945). It was not, as a child, that I failed to recognise the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi military hate and destruction machine: the Holocaust (being brought up among Jewish families, I learned about Anne Frank when I was a young child), the Nazi military bombing of Coventry, and the blitzkrieg of London (I was brought up in London in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and saw in my daily life many bombsites, some made, no doubt, by V2 missiles). It was that, as a child, I could not accept that 'my side' had knowingly willed and perpetrated the deaths of so many civilians. Surely that act made 'us' no different from 'them', and therefore as morally debased. I learned about US military forces dropping the only nuclear weapons ever used in war: on Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945). In the late 1970s I learned that Durham, the UK city in which I live, was to have suffered the fate that soon befell Coventry, in retaliation for the fire-storming of Dresden. In the late 1990s I visited Lubeck (famous for its medieval architecture and the literary Mann family), near Hamburg in northern Germany, Berlin (now restored as the capital city of Germany), and Pisa, Italy, to discover that Allied carpet bombing of culturally important cities was not confined to Dresden. Recently, I watched on television part of an interview with Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote Slaughterhouse Five, a book I have not yet read. I believe that the concerns he was expressing so eloquently, are similar to my own. I have three issues: the mass murder of civilians (was a principal purpose of the UK military invasion of Iraq not to locate weapons of mass destruction?); the Philistinic destruction of rafts of European culture; the de facto equation of Allied and Nazi morality.

A first entry

12 February 2005: A First Entry

The first entry of a new journal is, for me, always uncomfortable for being so self-consciously about being the first entry of a new journal. This weblog is a kind of new journal.

I understand much about keeping a personal journal, but know little about weblogging. It feels a little as though I am driving something like a huge waggon for the first time: not only are there are many controls about which I know nothing, but also I fear that the performance of the vehicle will throw up surprises. However, this latter is the principal reason why I wish to write a weblog: to find out what it feels like to do so, and to learn what I am able from the experience. It would feel presumptuous were I to assume that I could achieve competence beyond my already existing IT skills and journalling capabilities, although what I have written also feels like I am bringing low expectations to the experience.

My personal journal is a private document, and I have little experience of sharing its contents. This weblog is a public document, and my thoughts and opinions are open to comment. Past experience of voicing my personal thoughts and opinions regarding anything other than a professional matters is sufficiently unpleasant that it fills me with trepidation to do so. It feels as though I am making myself vulnerable to being hurt again.

Written in this public forum, it sounds to me as though I am pleading to be treated with care. Therefore, a first learning point is that when I express my feelings, my words risk being read as a coded message. This latter is far from the case in my personal journal. Maybe, in fact, people, and not simply other webloggers, from whom one might assume, or at least hope for, some reciprocal care-taking, will not read the expression of my feelings as a coded message. Maybe my fear is my fantasy, based on how I might read similar material. Oh dear! Learning point two: I am self-censoring what I would have written here in my personal journal, regarding the extent to which I bring interpretation to what I read. The privacy of my personal journal means that there is little that cannot be recorded in it. I guess that I have to learn the boundaries of this weblogging medium. Perhaps, more optimistically, I shall also discover the power and capabilities of weblogging .

I have given little thought to how frequently I intend to make entries into this weblog. It will probably be like my personal journal: occasional. I have given even less thought to for how long I shall maintain it. Part of me is inclined for it to continue indefinitely, and part of me wants to experiment with it being time limited. I shall make a decision about this latter once I feel clear in my mind.

I am aware of Thinks, by David Lodge. As a consequence, I feel more self-conscious writing this weblog. A voice (with an English accent) asks whether I am writing this weblog as my version of Thinks. Learning point three: I have written this paragraph after the final paragraph. Unlike in my personal journal, in which the format of each entry is effectively a kind of stream of consciousness, in this weblog I can not only edit as I type, but also revise the entire entry prior to posting, making the process of its creation, and also the final result, more like a web-page. I feel uncertain about whether this program has an on-line spelling checker, and am feeling a little disconcerted because I am used to typing within MS Word, with red and green underlining to help alert me to spelling and grammatical problems. I realise that the box within which I am typing has a variety of controls and instructions above and below, most of which are obvious, but some leading to controls unknown. (Note made later: I have now tried out the unknown control buttons.) Learning point four: what I have just written may be considered boring. I do not write boring text in my personal journal, for what I write is written for my experience of writing it and for my experience of reading it. In this weblog, I am writing with at least some desire to be interesting and/or entertaining, by which I feel confused.

I am finding it hard to think of how to bring this entry to an end. I know that the medium is intended to be informal. I am not really an informal sort of person. I like my SMS text messages to be grammatically correct and properly punctuated. "Loosen up. Live a little" (I must check from which movie this line is taken - my memory says that it is from the night-time kitchen scene in Peter's Friends, but I am unsure, because it is getting confused with the chicken coop scene in The Lady and The Tramp). No, I do not wish to loosen up. I wish to learn. "Okay, then, learn." (Why has this voice in my head a US accent?) Then that is my conclusion: I wish to learn.