What a lovely pair

We have a tit issue.

Blue tit, to be precise.

Some brand spanking new bird houses were nailed onto a couple of trees upon our arrival at the Heath back in December. Then a few days ago Poppa Pop (who travels under various guises, such as Our Heavenly Father and David - he lives on the motorway, don't-cha-know!) spotted a pair of blue tits swirling around one of them. And before he knew it, they flew straight inside! It's spring, so you know what that means... honeymoon period. Personally, I wouldn't have plumped for the crib these boobz chose.
Our feathered friends have claimed this one...


If I was a bird on the wing, I would've settled home here...


But I guess the first is less clashing with the blue tit's blue. I must be more of a robin red breast.

The only problem is, the front doors are a bit of a squeeze. Poppa Pop is now worried that the mother blue tit is incapable of getting out. We've tried creeping around the perimeter, listening out for any clues that will reassure us that everything is A-OK ("Are they breathing...?"), and taking photos from a distance to see if that will give anything away. Poppa Pop swears he can see a "shade of blue" inside here...


No, me neither. But don't ruffle your feathers dear readers, I shall keep a close eye on this pair.

The black billowing cloud

I always tend to be wary of things when they're considered popular. There's something inside me that ticks like a bomb, albeit one that is cushioned by a hundred used mattresses, or spun in bubble wrap and then discarded at the bottom of nobody's basement; but my body still tenses at that consistent, however muffled, ticking. It's as if I think no-one and no thing can be truly popular without some form of deception or cruelty or foul-play taking place. I don't judge myself to be naturally distrustful. I believe in many things, I suppose - what about you?

Upon waking to the news of the volcanic ash that's drifting ever closer, my immediate thought was of Don DeLillo's White Noise, and the airborne toxic event that he describes.

'...we saw a remarkable and startling sight. It appeared in the sky ahead of us and to the left, prompting us to lower ourselves in our seats, bend our heads for a clearer view, exclaim to each other in half finished phrases. It was the black billowing cloud, the airborne toxic event, lighted by the clear beams of seven army helicopters. They were tracking its windborne movement, keeping it in view. In every car, heads shifted, drivers blew their horns to alert others, faces appeared in side windows, expressions set in tones of outlandish wonderment.

The enormous dark mass moved like some death ship in a Norse legend, escorted across the night by armored creatures with spiral wings. We weren't sure how to react. It was a terrible thing to see, so close, so low, packed with chlorides, benzines, phenols, hydrocarbons, or whatever the precise toxic content. But it was also spectacular, part of the grandness of a sweeping event, like the vivid scene in the switching yard or the people trudging across the snowy overpass with children, food, belongings, a tragic army of the dispossessed. Our fear was accompanied by a sense of awe that bordered on the religious. It is surely possible to be awed by the thing that threatens your life, to see it as a cosmic force, so much larger than yourself, more powerful, created by elemental and willful rhythms. This was a death made in the laboratory, defined and measurable, but we thought of it at the time in a simple and primitive way, as some seasonal perversity of the earth like a flood or tornado, something not subject to control. Our helplessness did not seem compatible with the idea of a man-made event.'

So, I guess I believe in fiction.


Banksy: 'They exist without permission. They are hated, hunted and persecuted. They live in quiet desperation amongst the filth. And yet they are capable of bringing entire civilisations to their knees. If you are dirty, insignificant and unloved then rats are the ultimate role model.'

I've always been a fan of Banksy's art, and not just the curious suspicion it evokes in modern-day principles, but the means in which Banksy as an artist operates. To work with the medium of graffiti should be problematic for an artist, what with the obvious time pressures and legal issues that abound, not to mention the notion of whether it should be deemed 'art' at all by many individuals ('People look at an oil painting and admire the use of brushstrokes to convey meaning. People look at a graffiti painting and admire the use of a drainpipe to gain access'). I'm sure Banksy doesn't call it art. And yet it is obviously the means itself with Banksy that imbues his pieces with something more pertinent. His work is raw and angry, terse but suggestive. They stand as venomous advertisements, motifs of disillusionment and quiet violence. By scrawling it across a battered tube train on the District Line, or the empty canvas of a forgotten white-washed wall in Bristol, Banksy is asking for our distrust to the same degree as all those big-buck businesses are crying out for our hand via their next advertising campaign. His role as a graffiti artist is as much about reclaiming the streets from the rodents as it is about letting them loose from the stinking sewers. Are the rats those corporate companies and politicians that run riot, or is it the ordinary man, left squatting in his own mess? Surely it can't be a coincidence that 'rat' is an anagram of 'art'?


Tonight I will be watching the first televised political debate between the three main parties. I don't know who to vote for. I've questioned whether to vote at all. Then I get angry at people who say they won't be voting because they don't know or understand enough, which basically translates as they haven't tried to know or understand enough. I get angry at people who say they won't be voting because they don't believe it will make any difference, which actually means they don't want things to be any different. Everyone is claiming that this is the most exciting election in a long time because the race is so narrow but, when you think about it, it's actually the most unexciting because people just don't care who wins. The state of things hasn't quite reached the level of an 'airborne toxic event' yet, but it's certainly more than a 'feathery plume'; I'd say it's at the stage of a 'black billowing cloud', but one that is getting progressively closer and darker.

Banksy: 'Imagine a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody could draw wherever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall - it's wet.'

Universally challenged

Maths was never my forte. It always seemed a barrage of abstract symbols and numbers, and the only weapon I was able to arm myself with was a protractor. Who ate all the pi's? Not me. I understand how a select few might be that way inclined; how the thought of either being wrong or right is comforting. The idea of being held lovingly in the bosom of long division or a quadratic equation as a beacon of logical astuteness, the only way that could rationally and practically explain why x plus y equals... well I don't know, I said I was never very good at this. Obviously, I aligned myself with all those artsy-fartsy subjects, i.e. the ones potential employers don't really have any interest in.

There's an article in today's Daily Mail titled 'Why so many University Challenge champions fail to win in life'. Yes, I laughed too. Two quotes that have been emboldened during the course of this piece are even better. The first states, "I spend a lot of my time having to dumb myself down". The second: 'Winners tend to graduate to mediocrity'. Frankly, there's a simple equation that doesn't add up here: that intelligence should result in success.

It seems obvious enough. But is it? One contestant, John Burke, who helped the Open University to win the show in 1999, is now working as a postman. He says: "I'm certainly capable of a lot more than delivering papers. I've got a lot of other capabilities that I'm not really fulfilling." Another is Thor Halland, a participant of the winning Birkbeck Team of 2003, who 'experimented with cocaine, heroin and LSD in an attempt to 'fix' his brain'. Apparantly a sharp intellect needs 'fixing'. To be honest, I'm still transfixed by the fact that his first name is Thor. So why should intelligence equate success? The notion of being an intellect has always bugged me. People always refer to it as an intrinsically natural state, one that you're either predisposed to at birth or you're not. The fact that we now grow up having, oh I don't know, something termed 'an education' is skimmed over. And the argument that we're all either business-minded or creatively inclined...? That we're all habitually more adept with one side of our brain than the other...? No we're not. I've always said I'm proud to be a humanities student, but that doesn't mean I'm more artlessly gifted with verbs and adjectives than algebra and sums; I just decided at some point, in the grandly pointless narrative of my life, that I preferred abc to 123.

Halland goes on to say: "People like successful people, but they don't really like intelligent people. There's a little bit of jealousy." Really? Surely there has to be a marriage of the two, success and intelligence, at some point? You have to be intelligent to be a success at the end of the day, don't you? The problem occurs when people think that being academically gifted is going to reap bountiful years of indulgent success. You need to be smart across the board, in all sorts of frustratingly generalised areas - communicatively, technically, geographically, linguistically, pragmatically, etc - if you're going to stand out from the crowd. To expect that you will get ahead due to merely knowing about astrophysics is a little, well, stupid isn't it? Even Jeremy Paxman acknowledges that the kind of person University Challenge tends to attract is a particular character: "It is disturbing how many times students will confide, "It's been my lifetime ambition to get on to University Challenge." You want to scream: For heaven's sake, it's only a bloody quiz.""

If an intellectually bright individual 'fails to win in life', then surely the blame can only really be laid at the aforementioned person? So, not that bright then?

Como? Não entendi direito

Sim!

a: Você fala português?
b: Eu entendo um pouco, mas não falo.
a: De onde você é?
b: Sou de Pop-sicle.
a: De Pop-sicle?
b: Sim, de Pop-sicle.
a: O que você faz?
b: Sou pop.
a: Como? Não entendi direito.
b: Sou pop.
a: Fale mais devagar.
b: Sou... pop?
a: ...
b: ...
a: Onde é o banheiro?
b: Não sei.
a: ...
b: O senhor pode me trazer mais pão? Obrigado!





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