Unicorns are not related to horses

Many people think that unicorns are related to horses - that they are simply horses with a horn.

Observations in the field reveal that the two animals are quite unrelated species. Look at their hooves.

While the horse has a single hoof on each foot, the unicorn has a cloven hoof, suggesting it is more closely related to the cow. Or possibly the goat - check the beard. It's much easier to imagine a two-horned species evolving a single-horned version, than a non-horned species growing one, isn't it?

This also explains the rarity of unicorns. Unlike horses, they are vulnerable to foot-and-mouth disease, and are often believed to be extinct.

Apologies for the quality of the photos - obviously, they were taken under dangerous conditions.

Lazing on a sunny afternoon

Kitty and Mackerel making the best use of a sunny Saturday in London. We're back from a week in Cornwall, with lots of family, lots of body-boarding, horse-riding and all the rest of it.

But home is the place to be.

"I need to find a library - fast!"

That's an immortal line - possibly the only immortal line - from the Da Vinci code. A friend woke up from a profound sleep in the cinema, to hear Tom Hanks say it.

Wouldn't it be a great campaign for our public libraries, infusing them with glamour and excitement?

Hanks and his assistant leap on a double-decker bus and find their way to "Chelsea Library" - a name chosen for familiarity to US viewers (did they reject the Manchester United Library?).

I hope that Dav Vinci Code fans will be following them there. It looks a very nice place, in Chelsea Old Town Hall,

I don't know what happened at the point of the film - and may never find out - but in my mind, I expect they browsed the fiction shelves, joined a book group, looked at the historic costumes collection, did a Yoga class, and went on a local history walk.

Webcasting killed the video star

Yesterday, I presented a live webcast, for Techworld.

We really did broadcast from a studio opposite the Houses of Parliament. I'm told we ousted David Cameron from the studio - as we had the first appointment - but I'm sorry to say I walked past him without recognising him.

If you're interested in mobile email - and Nokia's views on the subject - you can watch it.

I promise to wear a suit for the next one, and not to look so squinty - I had to follow things on that laptop and the text was way small.

Rachel's going to China

Rachel got the news yesterday, that she's going to China with school, this time next year. We're all excited, and are getting stuff organised.

Like getting her a passport. Poor deprived child - this is the first time she's been abroad, apart from a day trip to France with school. I don't think the school expected anyone to not have a passport yet...

London stopped by elephant

The last few days, a giant elephant has been wandering round London, courtesy of French theatre troupe, Royal De Luxe. We saw it on its last outing and it was absolutely marvellous.

If you missed it, search on YouTube. You'll probably find more clips like the one above (it's not mine - mine aren't worth putting up).

We changed the weather! Now what about the politics?

So we danced on May Day, and again on my birthday. All these fertility rituals should be having some effect, yes?

And so they are. Thursday was bright and sunny all day. Kitty was home because her school was shut for the local election poll.


We sat in the garden with the animals - and here they are.

Lengthy aside:- We were voting for local representatives, but it all seemed to be about "national" issues, meaning the political survival of the Prime Minister and three or four individual Cabinet members.

Surely political posts ought to have something to do with thow well people do their job?

Basically, Charles Clarke appears to be incompetent, and John Prescott seems to be a drivelling clown (or are these media creations?). But they've been told they can continue if the local election result isn't too disastrous.

Similarly, the Labour Party goes on tolerating Tony Blair, as long as the "public" likes him.

So yesterday, we are told that our vote is the only way to have any affect on a bunch of increasingly arrogant looking people. And in so doing, we also determine the political future of a whole generation of local politicians, many of whom may not be nearly so self-seeking.

Speaking of May Day...

I finally saw the Wicker Man last night. It's a tricky film to watch because you already know the end. Everyone does. It's the first thing anyone tells you about the film.

Given that, I actually enjoyed it.

It's obviously cult stuff, so there's plenty on it at Wikipedia, and useful pages explaining what scenes were lost. It also comes in for its share of post-modern analysis "The blank, unstaring face of the Wicker Man is a tabula rasa for anthropological projection, and represents not a particular anthropology (such as pagan or Christian) but anthropology itself, " says a philosopher called Robert Farrow.

I think it's interesting that a lot of people take the "ancientness"of the rituals for granted. In the film, it's very clear that the island's rituals are Victorian-era reconstructions which have themselves become traditions.

There's lots of lovely traditions in the film - an excellent hobby horse and Beltane fires - but it's all been reproduced and engineered the first Lord Summerisle - who obviously read Fraser's Golden Bough (and so can you) - to get the locals to work for him. The film does talk about it being a revival of the ancient religion of the place, but there's a big nod to Victorian revivals.

Which is just like all ritual now. Are these activities ancient, and "authentic"? Are they done out of a "tradition" which might be only a few years old? Or are they "reviving", "reproducing" or "reconstructing" activity recorded 100 years ago - which might in itself be just a reproduction?

There's lots of good academic work on all this of course (try Ronald Hutton) but I also enjoyed a personal acount of it all -- The Magic Spring by Richard Lewis. In the end, we do the rituals we want to, respecting traditions and making our own.

May Day in Deptford had all of this rolled into one of course.

Milkmaids on May Day in Deptford

We celebrated May Day in Deptford yesterday, with the Deptford Jack in the Green, and Fowlers Troop.

My phone got set on low-res for some reason, so we'll start with a video of some milkmaids, dancing with garlands of silver on their heads.

for more May Day morris action, check the London Pride Morris blog.

Spring is here

Saturday couldn't have been better. The air filed with blossom and sunshine, I joined London Pride for dancing at a St George's Day Fayre in Acton.

The weather was perfect, the jousting and folk music was fun - and continued with an evening of blues and gospel, at the South London Liberal Synagogue in Streatham. Fresh from a gig at the Borderline, enthusiastic blues guitarist Simon Prager and Masha Vlassova - the Ma Rainey of Muswell Hill - gave us an evening to remember.

Saturday was more the kind of spring day you expect. An AGM at church, lots of rain, and we found we definitely have a hole in our roof. How are we going to pay to fix that? Simon Prager would have a song to get us through - probably from Blind Lemon Jefferson.

First night - the show is begun

You all want to know how the first night went, don't you? Just fine.

We all knew our lines pretty well, the actions all happened the way they should.

The problems -- the first act is way too long (some of the audience didn't come back after the interval) and the funniest stuff is in the second act which is much shorter (so they missed a treat).

It would be a hell of a job to cut the play though, since the first act is a mix-up of Queen Elizabeth's paranoia and obsession, a hatchet job on Hamlet and some historical games.

This might just work...

Let's get this in proportion. It's an amateur show. I've got 100 lines. There's other people there, who are doing great stuff.

It will be fine.

It's amazing how helpful it is to have props in hand too. We've got a splendid throne-like chair I borrowed, a quill pen and all sorts of bits and bobs.

Also, I've trimmed my whiskers to something a little more Elizabethan...

Bring back the 70s - we're all doomed here!

It's just like the 70s today at Judge Towers. The nation is reeling from (possibly) "the biggest industrial action since the General Strike in 1926, and we are all facing environmental doom (the Archbishop of Canterbury is telling us that our plane rides will kill poor people round the world - and he's right).

Kitty is home from school because there aren't any school dinners there, and she's watching the Goodies. (How lucky a father am I? The Goodies DVD was a present for my oldest daughter, along with a second hand phone form eBay. Not many fathers of 14 year olds get away with so little. )

It's like a time-warp. And the pronouncements of Margaret Beckett on the radio, are beyond satire. The government is taking global warming very seriously, so seriously that we're only doubling the capacity of our airports. It could have been much more, she says.

One week to curtain up...

... and the look you see here is not swaggering self-confidence. More the look of a rabbit in the headlights.

We're going for something a bit more "punk" in the costume and design. We've left the cosy clutter of the rehearsal room for the open stage.

And suddenly, we don't know our lines (or at least I don't).

Catch the look of terror as we have publicity photos taken.

Last night's rehearsal was pure misery - I never knew farce could be so depressing.

It was so bad I nearly didn't use tonight's rehearsal as a (perfect) excuse to skip a church council meeting. If you've been to a church council meeting, you'll know how bad it was.

It was so bad, I fired off a mean and pointless heckle at the stand-up comedy MC in the Theatre bar. I was on my way past the door, back to the rehearsal, and I heard him say "It's OK, you can heckle me," so I did.

I hadn't even been listening to the gig. In fact, I don't ever go to stand-up comedy. And I like the guy. And I said something so pointless it's not worth repeating.

I'm sure the show will be all right. Anne looks like she's enjoying it here. By next Tuesday, I hope to be thoroughly in the mood.

But at home, Alison is rummaging through the video shelf for The Goodbye Girl. You know, the film where Richard Dreyfuss plays an actor who's starring in a terrible camp Richard III, but his girlfriend still loves him....

Rachel the action hero

Rachel walked 40km at the weekend camping and carrying her food on the way. It was a Duke of Edinburgh Award expedition.

If that's not impressive enough, the first day was her birthday - and she had to be at school at 6.15.

The day after she got back, she hauled herself into school, and acted on stage in the evening, and did the same again on Tuesday.

Today, she's off school looking a bit the worse for wear.

Time for some Ruff stuff

So, yesterday we had six hours of rehearsal. Can people really put this much work into an amateur play and still enjoy it. Yes!

We got our ruffs, and enjoyed trying them on. I think Anne looks more and more like a raddled Gloriana every rehearsal. Dermot, yes your bum does look big in that.

And my beard. Still not looking Elizabethan. Time to take arms against it.....

The Letter of Marque

I just finished the twelfth book of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin saga, which started with Master and Commander.

There's no point adding to the general praise which fans heap on the series. It deserves every bit of it. This one is - as ever - the best in the series so far, with a last chapter full of a powerful pleasure that wouldn't mean a thing if you haven't read the previous eleven books.

And you should...

Elizabeth: My Part in Her Downfall

Things are getting closer and we now have a poster, props and so forth. There's more here, and box office details (hint!).

Learning lines is harder than it was when I acted at school, and I keep getting hung up on really obvious points to do with, well, acting.

When someone is about to snatch a book from you - it may have happened a hundred times before (and it probably will have with the amount of rehearsing I need), but you have to look like you weren't expecting it.

It's one of those things that you think is easy, but actually there's a lot to it - and stuff to (humph) learn even at this late stage....

I'm working hard, though, so I won't be the weakest link. It's going to be a very funny, very silly show.

Count your blessings

So far, I've "forgetten" and had a drink on three out of the five days, since Lent started last Wednesday. I never quite get to grips with Lent, and yet again, it feels like Christians are out of step with the rest of the world. Everyone else gave up booze in the "secular Ramadan" of January, and they are now busy re-toxing.

And anyway, it's not about giving things up. It's about appreciating what we have, appreciating the world, and being more connected to it all. Christian Aid has a better idea, and a lovely leafelt - "Count Your Blessings" - which gets you to do just that.

Today, the leaflet tells me to give 5p for every fairly-traded, and 10p for every non-fairly traded cup of tea or coffee I have (20p and counting...). Yesterday, it suggested giving 10p for every disease I've been vaccinated against (no idea, but it's probably at least £1.50).

I'd recommend this one to anyone, of any religion or none.

Bad English is evil

Here's a refreshing start to a Monday morning. A post on the Authority blog sends me off to read Orwell. Specifically, his excellent essay Politics and the English Language

This isn't altogether expected. The Authority blog is written by journalist Michael Cross and sponsored by local authority IT supplier Civica. And, from my experience of local authorities and IT suppliers, neither world is particularly concerned with good English.

But a look at the essay reminds me of two things:

• Bad English is evil. Not unfortunate or disappointing but, by allowing sloppy thinking that might permit evil, actually evil.


• It is actually possible to stand against this sort of evil.

There's a third, somewhat depressing thought, though. Orwell was writing of the decay of politics in 1946 - just a year after the Labour party arrived and when - from our prespective - politics was really alive. The welfare state was being started, and Churchill was out, on a 72.6 percent turnout in the 1945 general election.

Compare that with now. You don't need me to draw the comparision. Over here, the politicians have nothing to offer but words. Those words are now without meaning. And over in the US, you can get up an invasion on the basis of lies and fudge.

And even Orwell has become the thing he hated: an abused cliche.

So - I'm a real historical character!

Well I never. Bizarre though this play may be, I'm a historical character! Thomas Egerton, chief of police in Dario Fo's Elizabeth: Almost by Chance a Woman, was in fact one of her chief advisors, along with Cecil and Bacon (a different Bacon from the one who "wrote Shakespeare's plays", I believe). Ben Jonson wrote a poem to him.

The play happens at the time of the rebellion led by the Earl of Essex in 1601. I wonder if the queen really did call Egerton a "fuckwit" and point a pistol at him?

The Vampire Bunny?

Watching early Buffies (yet again) with the girls, I couldn't help feeling that the big bad guy in Series One looks familiar.
Something about the pink nose rang a bell.

Then I saw Rachel's rabbit, Salt...

Bum-rolls and Beards

This blog may go a bit thesp for the next few weeks. Normal rubbish about children, church and wireless should resume eventually.

Monday night we had a frock-fest. Nearly everyone else gets to wear a skirt, with a bit of Elizabethan padding known (in the theatre at least) as a bum-roll.

Anne as Elizabeth I looks "like a knitted toilet roll holder" according to one observer (which is apparently more or less the effect we're aiming for).

Dermot looks fine in his bum-roll as Dame Grosslady, but he will have to lose the beard apparently.

And then there's the question of my beard. I'm going to have to do something goatee and Elizabethan-or- with it

Luckily there's plenty of pix online, as the Guardian runs an article about what Shakespeare really looked like.

My searches for Elizabeth Beards lead me to a play called The Beard of Avon an American play which sounds a good enough proposition for someone to have a go at over here. The idea is that bumbling-but-good-with-couplets Will Shakespeare runs away with the theatre, to get away from his wife, and ends up in London, where he becomes a "beard" for prominent people who want their plays put on anonymously - starting with the Earl of Oxford, obviously including Bacon and finally even Queen Bess, who write The Taming of the Shrew.

Almost by Chance in a Dario Fo Play

So, unexpectedly, I'm in a Dario Fo play. Turned up at the wrong audition at South London Theatre, and found myself with the part of Egerton, a spymaster, in "Elizabeth: Almost By Chance a Woman", a foul-mouthed political farce set in the latter days of Elizabeth I.

The good news is I'm one of only six actors, we have a great director, and lots of ambitious plans for props, set and costumes. And it might be funny!

The bad news? Well, I'm feeling a lot more exposed now I'm off the chorus line. The show is on a lot quicker than I thought, so we have five weeks to get it together. It clashes with almost everything else in my life, and the rest of the family are a bit miffed.

Alos, I have to break it to the Sunday School, who said our panto was the best they'd been to, that this swear-fest might not be suitable for them (though I reckon any teenager doing the Tudors should enjoy seeing Elizabeth as a "moody, manipulative, foul-mouthed, incontinent hermaphrodite").

And I have to tell my Morris team that, yet again, I'm going to miss a lot of practice - including tonight!

NetEvents nerds raise cash for cancer

Picture(18)
Originally uploaded by judgecorp.

Nan Chen of Strix is holding a cheque for $32,000 raised in a charity auction at NetEvents.

The money is forCancer Research and the Prostate Project. It was raised in an auction of items including six bottles of pink wine, two World Cup tickets (to see France v Togo) and a ride in Manek Dubash's Aston Martin.

Well done everyone!

Another fine mess...?

These NetEvents meetings are not just speed-dating for nerds. Oh dear me no. They are so much more.

In interactive sessions round a table, we get the skinny on top companies' tech strategy, and even help to shape it.

Steve Vogelsang is a VP of the data networking division of ECI Telecom - which was created when ECI bought a company called Laurel Networks.

I was able to suggest a strategy that I believe they will now take forward. They absolutely have to buy Hardy Networks.

Then they can move on and buy Keystone Networks and launch products that implement the COPS protocol.

Municipal wireless is like platform shoes

"Everything goes in buying cycles, because we forget how awful it was the last time around," says Ian Keene, analyst at Gartner, talking at NetEvents. "Like platform shoes.

"Maybe local governments are only building theirown wireless networks, because they've forgotten what a pain it is to own your own network. It's fifteen years since they owned their own cables. All those people have retired by now, so they think 'own our own networks? Great idea.'"

But he admits he might just be being negative. Wireless can be much easier to deploy. And there are some very useful applications, like CCTV (easy to move cameras around), environmental monitoring, and so forth.

But the big headline-grabbing application, Internet access, could be a flash in the pan, he says. Public access and regeneration are political issues, not driven by real user pull, he says: local governments are generally felt to be poor service deliverers, so will people use their metro networks? .

And the technology issues is a surprise too. There's a fixation on Wi-Fi, and Keene is surprised that few - in fact, he says absolutely no - local authorities are planning to use the operators' 3G networks for their own applications.

Single Point of Failure - the power cord

OK, so I should get a newer laptop that can actually live on batteries for an appreciable length of time.

But I never spotted this particular single point of failure. My power lead just started crackling. I've borrowed one, but I'm maybe not going to be online as much as I thought.

Time to put my attention back into the room, I guess...

NetEvents in Germany

I'm blearily listening to a product marketing geezer talking about his network security product. There's snow outside. It must be NetEvents.

I've been coming on these computer-industry speed-dating events for years now. In the next two days, I'll get about 20 hours of product spiel.

The difference is, now we are all on wireless. This means Guy Kewney can post the news, and I can switch off and play around and write this.

The bad side of this is, I'm not sure I have enough attention left in the room to pick up on any interesting debates that might actually happen.

Physics through Morris Dancing.

So, tonight. my Morris side is dancing to explain science. We're showing how Rayleigh scattering makes the sky blue. We will have to explain it to weather forecaster Sian Lloyd, so I've done a quick check on the Web to revise how Rayleigh scattering works.

And of course, this being the Internet, there's also a rock band of the same name. They have tracks to download, but unfortunately, their music is the wrong tempo to use as we dance our explanation.

I have a theory that within the next few years, reall information will disappear on the web. Already, you bump into obscure rock band at an out-of-the-way American universities have nearly got it covered. When China really takes off and completely adopts capitalism, the world supply of alienated students will be multiplied by a factor of 100, and all Internet search terms will lead to rock bands.

With this RFID tag, I thee wed

Apparently a couple has exchanged RFID tags in the US. The radio beacons, implanted under their skin, give them access to each other's house, car, computer and so on.

This sounds very modern - they're also modern enough, you'll notice, to be a couple but not to actually be living together - and it certainly could have practical benefits.

Take me, for instance. I'm currently not exactly sure where my wedding ring is. I took it off because it was irritating a cut on my finger, and Alison put it in a drawer to keep it safe. But which drawer?

Now, if we'd had RFID tags implanted instead, there'd be no danger of losing them.

Thank goodness - Civil Partnership is old hat

I went to my first Civil Partnership ceremony on Saturday. That's officialese for Gay Wedding - legal in Britain since December. I like the official phrase because it expresses the ordinariness of the occasion.

Not ordinary, as in dull, disappointing or anything like that. It was, like any wedding, a wonderful occasion. And actually a bit more so because - like a lot of the first Civil Ceremonies - it was between two people who've already been together for years. There were lots of family members and lots of friends, and a certain feeling of "about time too".

Two months on from the start of Civil Ceremonies, there are a lot of ways in which Civil Partnerships are - and should be - old hat. The registrar looked very pleased to be doing the ceremony, but it clearly wasn't her first, and there have been plenty more in Marylebone Registry Office.

That's the mark of a real change: when it's unremarkable.

Worm speed record

Ever noticed how fast worms travel? I was watching a big one in the park, moving across a large tarmac area.

Ten seconds elapsed between the first picture and the second one, and a distance of three or four inches.
I say, well done, worm!

Sleeping bunnies - the most useful page on the Web

Our rabbit, Salt, needs medication in a sensitive area. Given how big a rabbit's back legs are and how sharp his claws are (they're made for digging!) this could be a risky business.

But not for us! I happened to stumble on a page where someone called Miriam explains how to put a bunny into a trance. Lay it on its back, and stroke its nose and cheeks.

With Salt, it works without fail, in a few seconds. This is the best "sleeping bunny" pic we have so far. More later.

Hacking playground memes

My girls were very keen to teach me the three hand gestures used in the Phones 4 U adverts.

"Hannah taught it to us," they said.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it's in an ad."

"Yes, but why do you want to do something from an ad?"

Finding that particular advert personally very irritating indeed, was enough to fuel a satisfying rant:

"Girls, have you heard of memes? There's a point of view that our entire purpose on earth is to reproduce our genes. Some people say a chicken is just an egg's way to make another egg, and there's no meaning to our lives. We're just doing what our genes require us to do.

"But luckily, it's not that simple. We're social animals. We have culture, and we pass that on. So now, our entire purpose is to reporoduce these ideas, which people call memes. So now, our lives have no real purpose. We're just doing what these memes need us to do."

"Unless... how about this? Why does it have to be phones? WHy not something else?"



Hopefully, "bogies 4 U" is going round the playground even now...

IT supplier calls for digital speed bumps?

There can be such a thing as too much technology, too powerful an interaction with our contacts, clients and colleagues. It could be time to put some speed bumps on what we used to call the superhighway.

That's what William Davies is arguing in the February issue of Prospect. I picked up his article from a link at Authority, an intriguingly titled blog filed by Michael Cross, on the web site of public sector IT supplier Civica.

Simplifying and parodying a long essay, Davies seems to be saying that by texting and emailing wherever we are, and doing business online, instead of in queues in the high street, we are dissolving society. We aren't doing do "real" stuff locally, anymore.

I know that's a poor translation, but I think I agree with what he's actually saying. I know I value local things where I meet actual people (the book group, church, the theatre) more than my work areas, where increasingly it feels like I interact with a shadowy bunch of geeks.

I've notice a paradox when those local groups go online, and "real" contacts turn into online ones. My fellow thesps, suffering from panto withdrawal, have been spamming each other with amusing Internet links, but now those who are on work email addresses are starting to drop out, because it's invading a different bit of their lives, and their IT managers and bosses are complaining.

It's interesting to get the "speed bumps" idea via that Authority blog. Davies is suggesting that IT should be limited, and it's passed on by an an IT supplier. Does Civica actually want to limit the IT it supplies to local authorities?

In fact, Davies' essay winds up by pointing out ways in which technology can help to protect and enhance isolation and silence (um, in a good way). I'll be interested to see how that might translate into stuff that a company like Civica might deliver....

To end, I like this quote from Davies:

"Telecommunications technologies have effectively flooded the market for social contact, rendering the market value of that contact worthless, just as would happen to gold should alchemy become possible."

I might spam that round my thesp buddies...

Turkish Delight - the results!

Turkish Delight
Originally uploaded by judgecorp.

Looks good enough to eat? Well do come over and have some, then. It's a bit sickly, dripping in syrup and far too honey-flavoured. Even Kitty says it's too sweet.

So thanks, Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall (for it was his River Cottage Family Cookbook that provided the recipe)!

Apparently, since the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe came out, sales of Fry's Turkish Delight have gone up by 200 percent (didn't people notice, it's the Witch - the baddy who gives Edmund the Turkish delight?).

I also found out that I am the only one in my family who hums "Fry's Turkish Delight" to one of the tunes in Lord of the Rings. As far as I can remember, one of the main tunes from the films comes straight from the Turkish Delight adverts. Not the recent ones, but the ones from the 1970s.

I can't find that tune on the Web, but I know it's the same, and I remember the ads. The sweets were Full of Eastern Promise, and the ads were full of slave girls. And a giant eunuch bringing a sword... to slice open a piece of Turkish delight.

Making Turkish delight

Making Turkish delight 2
Originally uploaded by judgecorp.

The girls were desperate to make Turkish Delight. We got a "family cookbook" for Christmas, by Hugh Fearnley Whatisname. It tells you how to mash potatoes and boil eggs, but the Turkish Delight is what interested us.

It involved lots of sugar, cream of tartar, cornflour and rosewater. Also pink food colouring, which the girls discovered is great for fake wounds.