Thoughts on a 'Brave New World' (2023)

 

While taking a walk in the local woodlands recently, I was surprised to find a sign at the end of a trail with words along the lines of 'People camping. Homeless so the council can find us - no other reason' [sic]. I may be wrong, but I'm guessing this has something to do with there being so few council houses that they are only available for those with absolutely naff all, which you may even think sounds OK until you consider the sky-high rents that private landlords are charging and the kind of salary you need to get a mortgage on even the most basic flat.

It has often been said that if you put a frog in water and gradually turn up the heat it won't notice that the water has become unbearably hot. This seems a great metaphor for the property market to me. In spite of all that has happened in recent years (killer-viruses, megalomaniac invasions...), the result of the drive to keep house prices accelerating above the rate of inflation is surely still the biggest drain on most people's monthly budgets, where the cost of just having a roof over your head is outstripping the kind of wages being paid for jobs that society needs. Since when did a home become a luxury item?

Back here in deepest Kent the only homes being built in my village are priced from approximately half a million upwards. For me, it is impossible not to ask whether or not society is truly being run for the majority. And is any political leader up to the challenge of doing something about it? Er... don't answer that!

I often feel that many who believe that the world is basically fair simply don't want to think about it. Or maybe it's just more comfortable to believe that you are closer to the millionaire class than to homelessness.

At the same time I hear that almost all railway station ticket offices are earmarked for closure due to the majority of tickets now being bought at machines. It is true that younger, more technologically-minded people might choose to use a machine over human interaction, but older people generally don't, yet it feels that they have been coerced into doing so because many ticket offices are now only taking card payments and older people are more likely to use cash. Thus, it does feel as if the rail operators have engineered this situation somewhat. I get a similar feeling in supermarkets where you can choose to use the self-service checkouts or queue up to see a lone cashier.

I am informed that there may still be somebody assisting customers to use the ticket machine and that it is unlikely that a small village station will get to keep its ticket office when even central stations in large cities are earmarked for ticket office closure, and I guess nobody is going to pay somebody to twiddle their thumbs.

However, in a general sense, if the majority of jobs are going to be performed by machines in the future, what will happen to the workers that are laid off? For instance, what will happen to all the driving roles when driverless vehicles finally stop crashing into walls? You can't stop progress, but my concern is that the jobs being phased out generally aren't being replaced with other jobs that the majority of people can do. Politicians seem to only focus upon 'high quality' jobs, which let's face it, only a minority will be able to get. It seems like it's going to be like a game of musical chairs with jobs. And gosh, won't the wealthy kick up about having to pay more tax in order to support the newly jobless masses? As with climate change I guess our leaders will finally start thinking about it when it's too late.

The optimistic logic of TV programmes like BBC's 'Tomorrow's World' in the 1980s was that if machines are going to be doing all the work, we will all have more leisure time and be able to work less. Life was going to be one big holiday with the leisure sector booming. The problem with this is that managers and shareholders rarely want to share the savings. Look at how the water companies have failed to invest in infrastructure in spite of huge profits. It's trickle-up economics, right?

Also in the news, the NHS recently celebrated its 75-year anniversary, but this came with a warning that it will not make a hundred years if we carry on the way we are. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, it often seems as though things are just being left to slowly fall apart so that anyone who can afford to switch to private healthcare will do just that, but what happens to the rest of us? It seems pretty obvious that most don't have the spare cash kicking around for private healthcare.

It all seems to come back to ideology at the end of the day. The NHS was founded with a view to society looking after its citizens regardless of wealth, whereas today it seems to me that the prevailing view is that if you don't have the bread it's your problem. As establishment figures are often seen in cathedrals for events such as coronations, I wonder how these advocates of the 'modern' view manage to make that fit with their supposed religious beliefs. Anyone would think they're just pretending!

The economist Richard Layard in his book 'Happiness' provides plenty of graphs showing that the greater the gap between rich and poor is in a country, the greater the prevalence of social problems. I no longer have the book but the graphs were plotted for things like illiteracy, violence, homelessness, drug abuse, etc. It was a pretty comprehensive list that sounds like your average episode of 'Eastenders!' I have found that in pointing this out, one can often be taunted as being a 'communist,' a 'Marxist' or worse, but in truth the solution is never black and white. Any system with no restraint generally ends up destroying itself, and unrestrained capitalism is no different. If life gets seriously bad for a large proportion of the population you tend to get a revolution. Do we really want this? Or should we put the brakes on a bit? Business leaders would probably say 'no, we shouldn't,' while those living in a Kentish wood because they have no other option would surely say it's gone too far already.

Closing the debate down by viewing all criticism of our society as heretical is certainly not my idea of freedom. It sounds more like the something George Orwell would have written about. Keep minds open and speech free at the point of use!

Sorry it was a bit heavy this time. I actively try to avoid seeing too much news, and I guess you can now see why!

Dorset Rail Trails - A Cycling Perambulation

 

I’ve taken five months off from writing, heeding the advice of (presumably) a distant relative Charles Caleb Colton, whose quote can often be found in diaries, ‘When you’ve nothing to say, say nothing.’

With all the news about artificial intelligence creating books and art it looks like the whole lot of us will be redundant soon. I guess those who are pushing the boundaries of technology have different kinds of minds to those who write, paint, make music, dance, create films, etc., being unable to imagine the satisfaction / catharsis that people get by creating something and (preferably) having it appreciated by others. I always thought that the idea was to get machines doing the tedious jobs so humans could be free to do the interesting stuff, but society seems to be heading in the opposite direction to me. It often feels like those in charge have read Orwell's '1984' and thought 'That sounds cool!'

It seemed like winter was never going to end this year, but thankfully my rucksack is down from the attic and has been in use for a few trips now. The most eventful of these was a few days cycling around Dorset. Having explored the Christchurch / Bournemouth / Poole conurbation thoroughly in the winter, I immediately set off on my bike upon alighting at Poole after a six-hour train journey along the south coast. The cycle path ran northward beside Holes Bay, an inlet from Poole Harbour which is reputedly the world’s second largest natural harbour.

Beyond Upton Country Park, I picked up the track-bed of a former railway line, now known as the Castleman Trailway, and eventually I came to the pleasant little town of Wimborne Minster after a leafy cutting and a short tunnel / long bridge under the road. I was lured by a pub which claimed to be the smallest pub in Dorset. However, the staff revealed that the claim was a little bit speculative and that, should somebody make a claim to the epithet for another alehouse, the word ‘probably’ would be added to the sign.

One particular local expressed his admiration at my notion of wild camping with a minimum of equipment (whereas closer to home, comments are often of the ‘not my idea of fun’ ilk. My response is of course that I wasn't inviting them!). Then off I set along lanes passing thatched cottages until picking up another disused railway route from Spetisbury to Blandford Forum. The old station at Spetisbury is well cared for and I stopped for a rest there, admiring the half-moon in the evening sunshine and marvelling at the fact that twelve people have actually set foot upon it. Bringing my musings back down to earth, the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway ran all the way to Bath and was even used by northern tourists on their way to Bournemouth.

The track-bed disappears as one approaches Blandford Forum, where I camped in a copse in Stour Meadows, a large area of common land. The only evidence of the line here are two arches which were an abutment on one side of the rail bridge over the River Stour. It seems that the pronunciation of ‘Stour’ rhymes with ‘shower’ here, whereas I’ve always maintained that our Kentish river of  the same name rhymes with ‘sewer’ - this is not a comment on the water quality I hasten to add.

Whilst the daytime temperatures touched twenty degrees the nights were unseasonably cold for late May and I had no less than five layers on in my sleeping bag. After a hearty breakfast in a café I was on the rail trail once more, plunging deeper northwest into the Dorset countryside. I stopped to look inside the pretty church at Stourpaine, and the hills on either side of the route were extremely picturesque beyond this, even giving my local ‘Stour Valley’ a run for its money.

At Shillingstone I passed a preserved station, complete with a railway carriage which has been utilised as a seating area for the café, and a replica signal box. I was ushered up the steps and given a demonstration of the levers for the points and signals as well as the system where the train driver is given a metal disc 'token' so that the points and signals at the next signal box cannot be released until the token is handed over and put into the machine. Hence, two trains cannot be charging towards each other on the same stretch of single track. It turns out that there are plans to create a short steam line here, so the working signals will once again serve a purpose beyond educating visitors like myself.

And so to Sturminster Newton and the end of the line. The settlement here was smaller than Blandford or Wimborne and the barman at the White Hart pub explained the difference between real ale and craft ale (craft ale can be served at lower temperatures without compromising its flavour). In spite of this I still ordered half a cider by mistake at one point. When in Dorset…

The remainder of my trip took me back to Poole the way I had come. The variation this time was that I used the signed cycle route along an undulating lane beyond Blandford Forum. Pausing by a hedge I spotted what looked like an upside down naked human form. It was pretty clear that this was a discarded item (presumably by somebody ashamed of its ownership) but I still pinched one of its toes to make sure that I hadn't stumbled across a dead body.

Upon crossing the Stour near Spetisbury, I rode the B-road towards Wareham which was both scenic and increasingly challenging as it went on. Wareham is a pleasant little town and young people were jumping into the river near the bridge that marks the beginning of the Isle of Purbeck. Like our Kentish 'isles' of Thanet, Oxney and Grain the word 'isle' is used loosely here and the imposing hills beyond mean that Purbeck can be seen from a good many miles away. Its stone has been used for building for centuries.

After eschewing the epic Sunday night queue for the chip shop in favour of a Chinese takeaway I headed northward to the woods, which appeared to have a mountain biking circuit in them with banked curves and jumps. I wasn't tempted; I just wanted to sleep. The ground didn’t get as cold as the copse near Blandford had done, which usually seems to be the case in evergreen forests, but a flying critter bit me in the night causing my lip to puff up to resemble something between Mick Jagger and the Elephant Man. This deflated as the next day progressed and hopefully the sunglasses nudged the look towards the ‘rock star’ end of the spectrum as I availed myself of three coffees after the eight-mile ride to Poole the next morning.

With a puffy eyelid to boot, I began the long train journey back to Kent, with a beer break at Eastbourne. I was pleased to see that Blue Moon beer was back on the menu at 'Spoons' and it was served, as it should be, with a slice of orange in the glass. However, three pints savoured in the lengthening sunshine streaming through the window still didn't prepare me for the onslaught of head-wind that I encountered when riding along the coast. My aim of camping one final night near the seaside town of Bexhill was soon abandoned in favour of almost completing my journey back on the next train and camping in a familiar wood around four miles from my home.

If you've enjoyed this traveller's tale, you may be interested to read my books 'Mud, Sweat and Beers' and 'Stair-Rods and Stars.' There's still time to catch these before A.I. steals my bike and my ideas to create a blockbuster written purely by algorithm to maximise sales. I guess the body would have to be dead and the lip would have had to have swollen to disfiguring proportions. Who wants the truth these days, hey?

How Big Is Ashford? / One Goes Mad In Dorset

I may be in a minority but every ten years I find it interesting to pore over the population figures when the census results are released.

It's particularly interesting down here in Kent, as my hometown of Ashford is often said to be of the fastest growing in the country, spreading rapidly across the farmland to the south of the town. I heard that a local songwriter once wrote a ditty along the lines of 'Come to Ashford before Ashford comes to you (credit is available if the composer comes forward!).

Well, the official figure shows an increase from 67,000 people to 76,000. However, I would argue that the boundary of what is regarded as Ashford should include modern developments like Park Farm, Finberry and Chilmington in their entirety. This 'urban area' figure gives a population of 84,000 (up from 74,000), which seems more representative. I imagine that service providers and businesses look at population figures when deciding whether or not to locate in a town, so it makes sense to me for the powers that be to revise the boundaries of what is regarded as 'Ashford' to include all the suburbs as it grows. I did suggest this (along with other tips for improvement) to our local MP as well as Ashford Borough Council when I was bored during the lockdown. I guess they must be working on it!

It has often been rumoured that Ashford will end up being the largest town in Kent, so you may be surprised to learn that Maidstone now has 121,000 inhabitants and is actually growing at a faster rate. In provincial Kent, Ashford is second in size after the county town, but if you include Dartford and Medway, which the 'City Population' website doesn't include in the Kent list, you will find that Dartford, Gillingham and Chatham are all still larger than Ashford.

Apologies to my non-local readers that the first half of this post is very much a local post for local people, but I then extended my number-crunching to the borough's villages.

The built-up area population is the best available gauge of village-size, and if you disqualify villages that have part of Ashford in their designated built-up area, the top ten largest are Charing, Wye, Hamstreet, Brabourne Lees, Shadoxhurst, High Halden, Biddenden, Woodchurch, Bethersden and Challock. One is tempted to record an audio clip reciting the list over the 'Pick of the Pops' music in the style of Alan Freeman!

If you look at parish populations the list is different as parishes vary wildly in size and some villages (like Hamstreet and Brabourne Lees) run across two parishes. I guess all this reminds us to be very careful when presented with statistics, as strategic use of figures can be summoned to bolster any point of view. If you want to say 'enough development' or 'bring it on,' you just choose the set of figures that best suits your point!

I recently took a trip to Bournemouth to try to break up the 'winterregnum' between Christmas and New Year (when the weather outside is frightful). With roughly 80,000 more people than Maidstone, certain parts of Bournemouth have a 'city' feel, but there are some delightful walks through the green arteries that follow various streams (or bournes) down to the sea. I found myself watching the kite-surfers in Poole Harbour one day and walking to Christchurch another day to admire the abbey. The name for this particular settlement comes from the abbey itself, which was so-named because during construction a large beam seemed to mystically appear roughly when an unknown carpenter vanished. I'm sure you can guess who locals thought this carpenter may have been, and the name just stuck.

Another interesting spot was in Bournemouth itself, this being the grave of Mary Shelley, the author of 'Frankenstein,' which is arguably the world's first science fiction book. I guess you could say that it is this author's idea of finding inspiration. Check out Digital Psychosis for the latest offering which I like to think was momentarily the world's newest science fiction book when released. Forget Prince Harry 'going spare' - you'll hear all about it on the news anyway - this is the 'must have' book for 2023 (even if I say so myself!).

Thoughts on the UK's Hottest Ever Day

 

19th July 2022

I started typing this on the hottest UK day of all time (again!) and with temperatures topping 40 degrees centigrade for the first time ever recorded, surely any remaining climate change skeptics here must now be convinced of the science. It is true that you cannot attribute any single weather event purely to climate change but the trend is obvious. Seven of the top ten hottest UK temperatures have been since the year 2000 and only one was pre-1990. And although we are an island, when it comes to higher temperatures we are certainly not unique.

I think it will prove to be the world's biggest travesty that our leaders listened to fat cats instead of scientists for about forty years, and now we are beginning to reap the results. Invading other countries and swelling the pockets of the rich seemed far more important than ensuring a stable future for our descendants. Believe the science; this is just the beginning.

It's rare that I recommend a book that wasn't written by myself or my mother, but I recommend 'Our Future Earth' by Curt Stager for a long-term non-sensationalist view on the subject. According to the book, we have already prevented the next ice age which is due in about 50,000 years time. Yes, this is the kind of timescale involved when it comes to releasing millions of years of stored carbon into the atmosphere over a few centuries.

Quite how uncomfortable we will make life for our immediate descendants relies on how quickly we can change to non-carbon forms of energy. In the mid-2010s we reached levels of atmospheric carbon that have not been around for 16 million years (according to YaleEnvironment360). Humans have simply never experienced what we are unleashing before, so it's a kind of experiment that we have all unwittingly entered and cannot bail out of. The delayed climatic response to what we are doing has been perhaps the biggest obstacle to human understanding of this issue.

What is particularly concerning is that the media hardly ever talks about what the world will be like after the year 2100, but there are teenagers now who will be around to experience this legacy. Why do we show so much concern for their school grades and the possibility of them earning well but give so little thought to the risks posed to their wellbeing by extreme weather, rising tides and war? Yes 'war,' because if we do not start taking a global attitude to global problems there will be fighting for the remaining fertile land and resources. People in my little corner of England seem to get incredibly steamed up about immigration, but has nobody considered hundreds of millions of displaced people that will be fleeing starvation and land destruction in the future? If they're that concerned about immigration they should be really concerned about climate change.

Another thing that truly scared me as a teenager was learning about the human population explosion in my geography lessons, being introduced to the theories of Malthus, which state that if human population increases beyond a certain threshold it will be reduced by war, famine and disease. Human population has seen accelerated growth due to the improvements brought about by the industrial revolution, but developing countries have yet to go through this stage of development which eventually results in a more stable population. Unromantic though it may seem, if there is little risk of you outliving your own children and there is a 'safety net' in old age (pensions), meaning that your offspring will not have to look after you, there is no need to have quite so many of those screaming bundles of joy. Britain went through the same process around a century ago, and as you'll observe families are now generally 'twos' rather than 'tens.'

To my mind, climate change is just another manifestation of the grim theory of Malthus. We cannot blame other countries for wanting to live the lifestyles that we have, but we have hardly led the way so far when it comes to switching to greener alternatives. In my opinion we should have got the ball rolling forty years ago when the seriousness of this issue first became obvious.

Instead we listened to people like the 'comedic' attention seeker, Jeremy Clarkson, and the ultra-rich who argued that if we let them do whatever they like to make money, it will eventually trickle down to all of us. Thus, we listened to George W. Bush and Donald Trump instead of scientists, and here in the 2022 'cost of living' crisis, I can say that I've seen more 'trickle' in the Sahara Desert!

Over the last twenty years I have tried to raise awareness of the seriousness of climate change in my own small way. I'm not exactly Greta Thunberg, but pretty much all of my books, fact or fiction, contain some reference to it. In my novel, 'The Nightshade Project,' averting the potential suffering that it will cause is in fact a dominant theme. I have also penned a few songs on the subject, most notably 'Hot Air' (originally recorded by Adam Colton and Teresa Colton in 2006). 

However, I'm not here to blow my own trumpet, but more to express disappointment in those who should know better- our leaders and those with genuine influence, courtesy of their massive bank accounts. These influencers have been so slow to get with the programme. Instead they muddied the waters of science to justify 'business as usual.' There was even an advert paid for by oil lobbyists implying that CO2 is green. If they really love carbon so much, why don't they go and work in a pencil factory? (Graphite, anyone?)

Instead of the world's great minds applying themselves to this pressing issue in 2022 we've seen an ego-based war started by a crazy old man who seems to want to bludgeon his name into history (classic narcissism). Think of all the money and resources that are now having to be diverted into fighting one another because of one man's ego, rather than being used to get to grips with humanity's most pressing issue.

Einstein is reputed to have said that 'insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.' That seems to be exactly what the human race has been doing collectively for decades. Put the dolphins in charge! (If there are any left, that is.)

West Sussex Coast - A Cycling Perambulation

So far 2022 has been shaping up no better than 2020 or 2021, with the TV news increasing your likelihood of driving to the nearest cliff and depressing the accelerator with every bulletin. If it's not narcissistic tyrants making a last-ditch attempt to make a name for themselves using mass brutality it's a constant drip-feed of price rises pushing people into the kind of poverty that just shouldn't exist if the world's sixth biggest economy operated with a modicum of empathy.

As always, sunshine and nature are there to provide a free panacea for all this angst, and I undertook my first cycling trip away during Easter of this year. My very first public article dates from 1994 and it documents a cycling trip through Sussex to raise money for our local Venture Scout unit, of which I was a member at the time. I saw the friend that I went with on TV news discussing COVID research a while back, so he's obviously done well. As for me, I decided to retread some old ground, and it was interesting to revisit some of those places after almost 28 years have passed. - 28 years!? That's insane!

I headed for Brighton with my bike and rucksack on a train that was packed as far as the tourist Mecca of Rye. After that i could breathe freely. Upon alighting, I cruised down to the coast and followed the sea wall cycle path to Hove and the road to Shoreham-by-Sea, which is the longest road in the UK beginning with a two, specifically the A259.

My comments were quite negative about Shoreham in that 1994 article, possibly due to the abundance of industry to the east of the town, but I can confirm that the town is actually very pleasant, with a bustling riverside town centre and a quaint churchyard nestling just behind it in a way not to dissimilar to the parish church in my home town of Ashford. I rode over the footbridge across the River Adur and then followed the cycle path along the coast, which was initially separated from the 'mainland' by a lagoon.

I described Worthing as having a 'green beach' in 1994, but I can confirm that the colour scheme is quite normal in 2022. The tall building by the promenade at the centre of the town reminded me of the similar building that you can't miss around fifty miles up the coast in St Leonards. It seems that planners seem to have a compulsion to put one of these 'iconic landmarks' in every large seaside town. As I continued westward the roads took me away from the seafront for a while, and more surprising than the tall concrete finger pointing into the sky was spotting the odd thatch-roofed cottage as I rode through the suburbs of these Sussex conurbations, a remnant of days before the towns swallowed up the surrounding countryside no doubt.

I got stopped at a level crossing near Angmering and I was surprised at some of the 'big name' shops in little old Rustington. I then picked up the sea wall for some more (respectful) pedestrian-dodging, heading into Littlehampton, another pleasant town where a river meets the Sussex coast, this time the Arun. A very basic white lighthouse overlooks the sea, which I had of course visited with my father in researching our lighthouse visiting tome, 'England and Wales in a Flash.' I was surprised to find a Wetherspoons pub in Littlehampton so I popped in for the obligatory curry before heading inland to Arundel and using a gravel trail which climbed into woods, where I found a spot to set up camp. The birdsong died down and the moon was bright. It was chilly as the night went on, confirming my long-established view that an early morning low of seven degrees is the very coldest temperature that I will camp in.

It was now Easter Sunday and I saw a deer as I continued westward along the trail, which soon turned south and descended to cross the A27 dual carriageway. I headed back to the coast via pleasant villages and suburbs, eventually resuming a westward course along the sea wall. I'd never been to Bognor Regis before, and the extent of my knowledge was that it is one of around a dozen places in England with the suffix 'regis' indicating 'royal patronage' and that it has long been reputed that George the Fifth's final word was 'Bognor.' The penultimate word was a taboo verb! However, this is something of an urban myth as his final words were in fact the equally pleasant statement of 'God damn you' spoken to a nurse.

I intended to use an independent café for breakfast but Wetherpoons was just too convenient again. I was surprised to see holiday-makers drinking pints of beer at 9am, and in spite of this Bognor was surprisingly quiet. I concluded that those who do their drinking at the other end of the day were not yet out of bed. Continuing westward on lanes, I found that the scenery became flat and very rural, a bit like our local 'Romney Marsh' in Kent. After heading southward down a lengthy dead end by mistake I lost the will to ride to Selsey, so I picked up the path beside Chichester Canal at Hunston, following it all the way to the marina at the end and then all the way back into Chichester, the county town of West Sussex. At 3.8 miles long, the canal is not exactly epic, but it's very pleasant nonetheless.

Oddly, this was my fifth trip to Chichester by bike but the first time I'd properly explored the city, which reminds me of a quiet version of Canterbury. The most striking features in the cathedral (pictured) for me were the Roman mosaic which is at the height of the original ground, so you gaze down upon it through a glass window in the floor, and a 'tomb for two' depicting a ancient couple holding hands which seemed romantic in a tragic way. I also did the 'wall walk' around the city which was almost as impressive at Chester's city wall, with a view of the priory and a motte-and-bailey castle mound, both in a large playing field. I then headed for the Chichester Inn and sat in the courtyard at the back for my first outdoor pint of 2022. Well, it was a bit more than a pint to be honest.

My next plan of action was to follow the old Roman road of Stane Street up onto the South Downs. There is something satisfying about following a dead-straight ancient course which is sometimes A-road, sometimes lane, sometimes bridleway and sometimes footpath. After a long climb through woods I turned around to enjoy the view, with the hills on the Isle of Wight in the distance. I found a spot to camp behind some gorse bushes and there was a nice sunset. The night was unusually silent for wild camping and the morning was again cold, so I packed up and began my ride back to Brighton at 6am.

I had a wander around the striking Catholic cathedral on the hill at Arundel, I found Angmering to be a very quaint village in spite of its suburban location, and I enjoyed a fine English breakfast with added mushrooms in an independent café (hurrah!) in Worthing. The staff were taking the Mick out of a customer who had been on a disastrous date. I'm sure that made him feel wonderful! I followed the A270 into Brighton purely to have a nose at what journeys were like before the town was bypassed. As I passed beneath the plethora of railway lines I spotted some steps leading up to a siding that had been converted into a short walking route called the Brighton Greenway. I followed this to the station but I wasn't ready to go home yet, so I decided to ride to Lewes, the country town of East Sussex.

As you'd expect in a city with Britain's only Green Party MP, the cycle route beside the A270 out of Brighton was very good, but the pub I intended to spend lunch in at Falmer was not open on Mondays so I merely followed the route to Lewes and caught the first of three trains home. Falafel, homous and a can of Coke on Hastings Station was the somewhat modest finale to the mission. If you've enjoyed the write-up, you know where there's plenty more (Stair-Rods & Stars).

Thoughts on the Lyrics of Limerance

"I think love lyrics have contributed to the general aura of bad mental health in America" 

- Frank Zappa

It will soon be February 14th. For a long time I used to refer to this as Singles Awareness Day, and I even wrote a song about the way that single people can feel overlooked or portrayed negatively, as though only one lifestyle is valued by Western society. You only have to turn on the TV to see adverts, programmes and films that all tap into the 'one size fits all' philosophy. The reason for this is perhaps obvious in evolutionary terms. A lifestyle that generally results in the propagation of human population is going to be seen as 'desirable,' although with the number of humans increasing exponentially out of pace with resources on a finite planet, it may be time for society to enter a new paradigm.

Then I had a period where February 14th didn't really bother me at all. My girlfriend (who later became my wife) and I exchanged cards but we weren't always together on this particular day. We had plenty of chances to catch up all year round after all. That said, it was always nice to go out for a meal, although we didn't actually need an excuse to do this.

Now, things have changed again and my thoughts on the 45th day of each year are perhaps different once more. I now think of this as the Festival of Limerence, because if you think about it, it's not really for couples who are already together and secure, but more about declaring interest in the early days of uncertainty - cards signed with a question mark and all that mystery and intrigue. I feel that I should apologise at this point for one incident around thirty years ago when I was at school where I was embarrassed to receive a card from a girl I wasn't attracted to, tearing the card up, which in hindsight was horrible, but as a young teenager who had yet to experience such emotions I guess I had yet to fully develop skills of empathy. It was poetic justice that I didn't receive a card from anybody for many years after this!

It recently struck me that much of what society thinks of as romance is really 'limerence,' a term coined by Dorothy Tennov in 1979 who postulated the kind of intense romantic infatuation that is often considered 'romantic' is a very different beast to familial love and other uses of the other L-word.

Let's look at some love songs that might just be limerence songs.

The first ditty that springs to mind is Robert Palmer's 1986 hit, 'Addicted to Love,' which pretty much compares the romantic experience to that of drug use; 'Your mind is not your own.' One of my favourite songwriters is Bob Dylan and albums such as 'Time out of Mind' (1997) are littered with expressions of unconsummated frustration. He sings about being 'sick of love' and 'in the thick of it,' and exclaims 'You have no idea what you do to me' and [it feels] 'like the universe has swallowed me whole.' If you rewind to the 1976 track 'Isis,' he sings 'What drives me to you is what drives me insane.'

Leonard Cohen was another master of seemingly limerent lyrics, in songs like 'There Ain't No Cure For Love' (1988), once again equating the experience with that of being ill, and in the 1971 song 'Avalanche' he sings 'I stepped into an avalanche, it covered up my soul.'

Often lyrics simply glory in the sheer misery of it, as though there is some apparent virtue in feeling like a sack of effluent! However, one song that really doesn't glorify the feeling is Barry Ryan's 1968 classic 'Eloise,' with lyrics like 'And only time will tell, and take away this lonely hell.' Then there's the Temptations' 1971 hit 'Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me),' which leads the listener to believe that the vocalist is blissfully happy before declaring that it's all just fantasy. Another song that smacks of limerence is John Lennon's 'Abbey Road' composition for the Beatles, 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' where he repeats the line 'I want you so bad, it's driving me mad' throughout the song and the band attempts to represent the heaviness of the feeling musically with the endlessly circling coda.

Taking all of this to its logical conclusion, could we infer that a greater percentage of creative and artistic people experience limerence, rather than the ordinary more controlled form of romantic feelings? Or to turn it around, is it this profoundly unpleasant and obsessive experience that prompts the person to release some of the tension creatively?

Food for thought. So what actually is it?

The fascinating book 'Living with Limerence' by the mysteriously named 'Doctor L,' postulates that three factors must be present for limerence to occur. These are an initial sign of hope followed by sufficient ongoing fuel for this hope to survive and a level of uncertainty. I am of the opinion that much of our romantic fiction is entirely based around this concept. It's not a love story if a couple merely meet, start dating, mutually agree upon a relationship and end up getting married (or whatever substitutes as the ultimate fulfilment in modern societies). There has to be a certain level of impossibility. For example, one or both partners could be in another relationship, or there could be geographical or socio-economic barriers ('Romeo and Juliet,' anyone?). If the limerence is expressed and the result is positive it could be passed off as romantic comedy, with all the frustrations seeming comedic in the light of the happy ending. If the limerence does not produce the desired effect the story will be more tragic, as well as being the source for a million love songs (Barry Manilow / Take That pun intended).

The point about uncertainty is particularly interesting. Professor Robert Sapolsky in one of his many fascinating YouTube lectures demonstrates how a perceived 50% chance of an action resulting in success produces the maximum amount of dopamine in anticipation of the desired result. Both a 25% chance and a 75% chance result in less dopamine. I would postulate that with relationships the brain views the 'yes / no' nature of a potential partner as a 50/50 chance even if it is not. Thus, the dopamine goes through the roof and one can be stuck in a state of limerence.

It is also postulated that the experience is a kind of sticking plaster over deeper issues, such as lack of fulfilment, being the brain's way of creating its own excitement when things are not quite right at a more profound level. For example, it is commonly assumed that John Lennon's extreme emotions for Yoko Ono were a result of losing his mother at a young age.

Returning to art and literature, it does seem that a huge proportion of such creativity stems from this experience that the majority will fortunately never have, in spite of idealising its themes. I guess it is some consolation to turn such unpleasantness into something that is, on the whole, appreciated. Take the novel 'Love in the Time of Cholera' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez for example, where a man simply pines away his whole life for a woman who he eventually pairs up with in old age. In truth, that's not romantic, that's just disturbing, and thankfully our brains agree. Generally periods of limerence have a shelf-life that can be measured in months and at most a few years. And the more generally experienced non-limerent form of passion is not so different either in its lack of longevity. And this is down to our old friend, evolution.

If a couple could be completely obsessed with one another for life, you can see how any potential children might be neglected. The parents would be too wrapped up in one another to fully concentrate on the needs of the child. However, literature and films rarely depict the period after the wedding when passions die down, but die down they must, because that's how it was for our ancestors. In other words, the children that survived had the parents that cooled off after the usual time it takes to produce offspring, and thus these traits were passed on.

Returning to limerence, it is perhaps a perfect example of something called ambiguous grief. When a person dies, the death is final and once grief has been experienced those left behind can recover, but a limerent has to deal with an ambiguity where they can both imagine a life alone and a life where the potential partner becomes an actual partner. And one thing human brains can't stand is duality. And with all that dopamine sloshing around (among other hormonal changes), it is a chemical addiction just like heroin or cigarettes! It seems that Robert Palmer wasn't so far off the mark after all.

[Adam Colton is the author of numerous psychological fiction books as well as '2021: A Musical Odyssey,' which reviews classic rock albums.]

Thoughts on Rent, Football & Eurovision

When everybody was chanting 'It's coming home' at the recent Euro football competition I didn't realise they were singing about me potentially going back to my mother's house to live at the age of 46, although I do object to being referred to as 'it!' Yes, now that the pandemic has been declared 'over' by politicians and the eviction ban has been lifted on tenants I've been slammed with a whopping 15% increase in rent and there's naff all I can do about it, other than pack up and 'do one' as I believe it is fashionable to say.

Yes, I am one of those old fashioned people who still uses a property for its traditional purpose of living in it rather than for making oodles of money. As rents shear away from wages at an exponential rate I seriously do wonder what will happen in years to come. Will we be one big happy homeless nation while a minority get to rattle around in ten properties each, letting out cupboards for £2,000 a month for us to squat in? I anticipate a mass exodus from this particular block that has been home to me for five years, soon to be filled with London commuters on four times the salary. The great unquestionable God of Market Forces has spoken.

Free market lovers say that there is no 'magic money tree' when it comes to funding public services but when it comes to mere mortals paying rent they expect us to find a whole forest!

Well, I've been looking for one of these 'magic money forests' but all I found were a few vines - they were sour grapes. Boom boom! But no, these magic money forests do exist, but they can only be found offshore and they seem to be for the exclusive use of millionaires and billionaires - you know, in places like the Cayman Islands. 

So what of the football?

As Bruce Forsyth used to say 'Didn't they do well?'

As well as Brucie's game shows, Worzel Gummidge was a popular programme when I was a child. It featured a scarecrow that came to life and generally tried to win the affection of a stuck up wooden doll called Aunt Sally, who used always used to buy two cakes in the local café, one for eating and one for throwing.

Now this came to mind because I wondered if football fans do a similar thing with beer. Do they buy one pint for drinking and one for launching whenever a goal is scored? I can't quite understand the whole drink-throwing craze. Surely it is possible to contain one's excitement just long enough to put the glass down? And if not, how did people manage to keep the liquid in the receptacle for the entire history of football but suddenly find an irresistible urge to hurtle it in the mid teenies, or whatever they decided to call the decade from 2010 to 2019?

I'm guessing the most sensible approach is to buy two pints and to drink four fifths of the first one, leaving four fluid ounces in the bottom while you enjoy your second pint. As the players near the opposite goal you then pick up the depleted pint which will contain just enough liquid to made a splash should a goal be scored. When the pressure is off you merely revert to your full pint and continue supping contentedly.

The other obvious aspect of this is that of discomfort. One can only hope that the goals one wants are scored late in the game to minimise the time spent soaking wet. Another aspect is that one probably doesn't want to arrive home smelling like a brewery, that's assuming you can afford to have a home. If you're reading this huddled in a sleeping bag on a slowly melting Antarctic ice shelf in 2100 because that's all you can afford, 'homes' were like warm boxes with people inside.

Observing all the airborne beverages on the TV news I wondered how fans were going to top it should England have actually won the entire competition. Unfortunately we didn't get to find out, but casting my mind back to those TV shows of the 1980s, perhaps Tiswas-style carnage with custard pies and buckets of water would have been in order!

In the end Italy scooped the double whammy of winning the Euro competition and the Eurovision Song Contest, another institution that I cannot get my head around.

Now I'll concede that there are lots of reasons that European countries may not be huge fans of 'Royaume Uni' at the mo, but this is a 'song' contest, not a popularity contest. Surely the clue is in the name. It's not called the 'Eurovision Political Affiliation Contest With Added Music' is it? Admittedly our song wasn't amazing (are any of them?), but I still can't see how it was so bad that we deserved 'nil points.'

Personally I feel sorry for the performers. It should be an honour to represent the UK on the world stage, but they remind me of soldiers being ordered out of the trenches to face the onslaught like lambs to the slaughter.

And talking of music, isn't it time the line in the ubiquitous football anthem was updated to 'fifty years of hurt?' from 'thirty.' Let's hope Gareth Southgate's boys can triumph before it reaches sixty. Or indeed before I reach sixty! Come on England!