A natural alphabet

Many, many years ago I was sent on an advanced police driving course so that I'd be authorised to break speed limits and pursue 'bandit' vehicles - if it was justified and safe to do so. The instructor was a dour Scot who would slap you down for the slightest mistake, and quite rightly so. In the sorts of situations he was training me for you can't afford to make mistakes because you'll be putting your life and that of other road users (including the bandit) at risk.

One thing that he insisted on during the early weeks of the course was a commentary. He wanted me to speak continuously to explain what was happening all around me as I drove:

'... I'm in a two way single carriageway street with cars parked either side of the road ... speed limit is 30mph ... shops all along the road and lots of people walking about ... watching out for pedestrians stepping out between cars to cross the road ... checking my mirror and there's a black Ford Escort behind me ... red Honda Civic in front ... traffic lights 50 yards ahead showing green ... checking my mirror and indicating to turn left ... lights still green ...'

The purpose of the exercise was to improve my powers of observation. By having to find things to talk about, I was forced to constantly look as far ahead as I could see but to also look behind me and to both sides. As the instructor rightly explained, the vast majority of accidents are due to lack of awareness of what's around you, either through inattention or distraction.

That was nearly 40 years ago and I've never had an accident - either at work or in my own car. I'd like to think that part of the reason is the good training I received.

I found myself thinking about this a couple of years ago at the start of the Covid lockdowns. I'd started going for longer and longer walks in the fresh air. Part of the reason was to get fitter. But I was thinking of my mental health too. Safe, socially-distanced interactions with neighbours and fellow dog walkers was very welcome. But I also enjoyed the solitude of walking among tall trees and across pretty meadows. As I've written about several times before (see here and here), this is something that has been proven to be good for our wellbeing.

I then decided to set myself a series of tasks to keep my brain active. I started by learning to identify all of the deciduous trees I passed. Then I started on the evergreens (still a work in progress). Then I topped up my knowledge of wild edibles to forage. It's been a fascinating (and tasty) couple of years.

And then, a few months into my first 'project'. I spotted this on the path in front of me:

It was a perfect capital letter D, made from two twigs that had randomly come to rest against each other. And a thought struck me ... could I find all 26 letters of the alphabet? What better way to really challenge and hone my observation skills?

Over the next few days, I ticked off some of the easier letters such as Y, O and X.

'This will be a piece of cake', I thought.

Oh boy, no.

Some letters proved to be surprisingly hard. Admittedly, I made it harder by setting myself some rules. Firstly, it had to be something that had occurred naturally - no arranging of rocks, twigs or anything else to make the shapes. Secondly, no photo manipulation (other than cropping) would be allowed. And, thirdly, it had to be natural and not man-made. That meant no cracks in pavements or wooden fences or bent pieces of wire. The only exception to this that I allowed myself were the horse hoof prints. They were made naturally by an animal and, had the horse not been shod, it would still have resulted in the same shape.

It eventually took me nearly two years to get the set .. and the final two or three really tricky ones took seven months by themselves. To be honest, I'm still not happy with either the I or the R. I really wanted a full capital I with serifs top and bottom but never did find one. And the R is ... clumsy. I'm still looking for a better example.

So, here's my wild alphabet complete (click on it to see it larger). 

I'll keep looking for a better R and a better I. The V is a bit ropey too.

And maybe more ... I spotted this just a few days ago ...

Here comes another year or so of observation training ...

On the Ba'

This month has seen many Shrovetide so-called 'Mob Football' matches taking place up and down the country (as I talked about here). Yesterday in was the turn of the Denholm Ba' - a traditional Borders handball game with written records dating back a couple of hundred years. Its origin lies in a match using an invading Sassenach’s head as a ball. 

Allegedly. 

Most of the action takes place on the large green in the village centre with goals along the A698 to the East for the Doonies and Honeyburn Bridge to the West for the Uppies. Teams are usually of ten to twenty players, often including participants from neighbouring settlements with their own similar traditions like Hobkirk and Jedburgh. Play usually continues after dark until around 7.30pm and in spite of the generous space in the village centre, players always end up stopping the traffic for a while in the street. 

Good luck everyone! 

Shrovetide Mob Football matches can be brutal ...

   

It was him, Officer!

I've been having a tidy-up in my study recently and, over the weekend, I came across some extraordinary images. 

My involvement with the TV show QI began shortly after my first book, Joined-Up Thinking, was published and while I still had a year or so to go before retiring from the police service. My first ever contributions were to the QI 'F' Annual - in those days, the show brought out an annual every Christmas. Sadly, they only did a few as (a) it was a lot of hard work - we'd set ourselves the rule that all of the material would be new stuff not seen on the show, and, (b) it made no money. Everyone involved - the BBC, Talkback (production company), the publishers, and the agents who managed the comedians and use of their images - wanted a share, meaning there was nothing left for the people who actually wrote the book. That said, we found enough content every year to warrant having editorial meetings to sort the wheat from the chaff. 

For the 'F' Annual, I contributed some content that made it into book and some that didn't. One feature that didn't was a policing-themed bunch of facts under the title of Fuzzy Firsts. To accompany the piece, I engaged the help of a colleague of mine, police forensic artist Jan 'Boris' Szymczuk. 

I got him to interview several people to get their descriptions of three supposed 'suspects'. He didn't know, at this time, that I was doing work for QI. And the witnesses were told not to give any clues and to offer no other information other than to answer Boris's questions. Here are the three pictures he created based solely on those interviews.

Would Alan Davies, Stephen Fry and I get arrested as the result of these being posted publicly, I wonder? 

Some police artist sketches come in for a bit of stick from the public but this is unfair.

'The main thing to grasp is that it's not supposed to be a portrait, or a piece of art,' Boris explained. 'It's much easier recognising someone again than describing them bit by bit. What we're looking for here is what's called a 'type likeness' - it's just a visual likeness, not a copy - a bit like putting a jigsaw together as they hand me the pieces. I'm just the witness's pen and pencils - their toolbox.' 

Most witnesses get only a fleeting glimpse of a suspect during what is often a traumatic incident. And people like Boris simply have to draw what they're told to draw. 

'I can't go beyond what someone tells me, even if I think it looks horrible or daft,' he explained. 'You see pictures on TV looking terrible, but if the witness says "Stop. That's him!", then that is him. I can usually tell within 20 minutes if they're going to be any good.' 

The prevalence of CCTV has now negated some of the work of the forensic artist. And they now have electronic e-fit imaging systems too. But it's interesting to see just how they used to do things.

When it went well, it went well. Other times, maybe not (none of these are by Boris!)

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Welcome to the inside of my head

I've lost count of the times someone has said to me, 'I wish I knew what goes on inside your head.' 

Well, I can show you.  

Back in 2007 I helped out a friend by taking part in a research project for the National Epilepsy Society. Sounds grand eh? Actually all I did was lie around inside an MRI scanner while really clever people asked me questions and set me tasks. Meanwhile, the scanner created images of brain activity (if any) occurring inside my skull. 

I was a 'control sample' you see. By comparing my brain to those of people living with Epilepsy, it was hoped that the project might reveal possible new strategies for reducing the number of incidents a person suffers. 

The payoff was that I got to keep a bunch of photos. How many of you can say that you have photos of the inside of your head, eh? 

If you can't figure it out the views are (from l to r) view from the back, side and top of my bonce.

Wait ... that last image ...

   

The 'Beast from the East' approaches ...

Sproiing is so close now ... but the so-called 'Beast from the East' - a very cold weather front - is due to arrive here next week bringing snow and potential temperatures of -7C. 

Bad news for the handful of butterflies and bees I've seen. 

And bad news too for the daffodils that are just starting to open. And how will it affect the Bluebell shoots that are just starting to appear above ground? 

All we can do is watch and wait.

Wrecker's Studio

Following on from yesterday's nostalgic visit to Shiver Me Timbers near Penzance, here's another interesting place that I discovered while visiting my folks in Cornwall. 

Wreckers Studio is not a reclaim yard - it's actually a back garden at a house in Porthleven that has been turned into an exhibition space by local artist Paul Williams. 

I love places like this. 

I can't tell you more about the place as it was shut when I discovered it and the website link doesn't work. 

However, Paul is still very active on the local arts scene - here's a link to an open day during last year's Arts Festival.

I must pay another visit when it is open.

Time Travelling Trains

It's a curious thought that standardised timekeeping in Britain has only been around for the last 175 years or so. 

And it only happened because people were worried about missing their train. 

Let me explain. 

This morning's sunrise in Brighton was at 0656 but in Edinburgh it was 0712. Because the Earth is curved (sorry Flat Earthers), the sun comes up over the horizon at different times depending where you are on the globe. And this constantly changes. 

In six months time on August 25th, sunrise in Brighton will be at 0604 while in Edinburgh it will be the same - that quarter of an hour difference has vanished. 

But just a few months later on Christmas Day, sunrise will come to Brighton at 0803 and in Edinburgh at 0845 - the gap between them is now three quarters of an hour.

This wasn't a problem back in the days before people started to travel long distances - 'Local Time' was good enough. Local Time was set by observing astronomical events such as sunrise and sunset, the position of the Sun in the sky and the waxing and waning of the Moon. Sundials - the first real attempts at creating a chronometer - used the Sun to give an indication of the time of day. However, solar time is not the same as clock time and a sundial set up in Brighton will give a different reading to one in Edinburgh for much of the year. In order to get the two to match you have to make certain corrections known as the Equation of Time.

The orbit of the Earth is not perfectly circular and its rotational axis is not perpendicular to its orbit. The sundial's indicated solar time thus varies from clock time by small amounts that change throughout the year. The solar time must be corrected for the longitude of the sundial relative to the longitude of the official time zone. People far smarter than me came up with an equation to allow people to calculate the differences and these were widely published in almanacs. However, the average working man or woman paid little attention to this as it did not affect their lives. Even when mechanical clocks and watches appeared, people would often set them to Local Time rather than Greenwich Mean Time (created in 1847). What the time was in faraway London was of little interest to them.

Oh, and if you're wondering why GMT was centred on a borough of London, it's all because of the Navy. As you'll probably be aware, the Royal Naval College was built there (established in 1604). Establishing a meridian zero longitude point at the college was a way for British mariners to calculate where they were in the world by comparing their longitude to the Greenwich Mean. One chronometer on a ship was kept on GMT but this did not affect shipboard time, which was still solar 'local' time.   

Meanwhile, back on the mainland, everything changed with the coming of the railways. 

The inconsistencies of Local Time would have meant that setting timetables would be impossible. Therefore, the Great Western Railway adopted GMT in November 1840. Other railways followed suit, and by 1847 most (though not all) railways used London time. On September 22nd 1847, the Railway Clearing House, an industry standards body, recommended that GMT be adopted at all stations. And, by 1855, and in order for people to be able to access the railways on time, nearly all public clocks in Britain were also set to GMT (though some, like the great clock on Tom Tower at Christ Church, Oxford, were fitted with two minute hands, one for Local Time and one for GMT). 

The last major holdout was the legal system, which stubbornly stuck to Local Time for many years, leading to oddities like polls opening at 08:13 and closing at 16:13. The legal system finally switched to GMT when the Statutes (Definition of Time) Act 1880 took effect.

So now you know.

Trader Gray's Upcycling Heaven

Following on from yesterday's blogpost about David Kemp's work (here), you may be wondering where artists like him get their materials. A lot of David's come from antiques shops, car boot sales and house clearances. But some also come from reclaim yards and one of the best I've ever know wasn't too far away from his Cornish studio ...

Near to Penzance, between the villages of Long Rock and Marazion, there was once a place called Shiver Me Timbers. It consisted of acres of tumbledown shacks and sheds overflowing with marvellous junk. 

It's sadly, now long gone but, while it was there, it was a thing of chaotic beauty.

I visited the place many times and, over the years, I bought quite a few things knick-knacks and gewgaws. One such item was a pair of Spanish trawler fishing floats that now hang from the ceiling in my study. The owner of Shiver Me Timbers told me that they had been 'cut off one of their bastard poaching nets'. But that was the sort of tall story that Terry 'Trader' Gray used to tell all the time. There was a story attached to every item - often a rude story. But he was a gentleman and and raconteur and he loved what he called his 'museum of oddities and wonder'. 

When he died in 2009, his son Joe took over the business. However, in 2011 the landowner decided to sell the site to a property developer and Joe shifted what he could some three miles down the road to Crowlas and the Truthwall Industrial Estate where it now operates from. 

It has a website and a Facebook page and is still doing good business thanks to the current vogue for upcycling old furniture. It's not quite as magical as the former site but it's still well worth a visit and Joe is every bit the character his dad was.

For more brilliant pictures of the old site in its heyday do visit John Stumbles' excellent webpage about the place.

And here's Sky Neil's wonderful short documentary about Terry and the reclaim yard.