Random thoughts.

I'm in post-project exhaustion. Yesterday was the last 60-sample day for this project. Every other time I had to start clearing up and getting ready for the next one, but this is the last one. It's like how those pyramid builders felt when the whip wielder died.

So I can't be bothered with too much thinking tonight. I have a bottle of Laphroaig and a box of chocolate raisins and cranberries. That's fruit, and chocolate is a vegetable too, so it must be good for me. Instead of the usual intemperate rant, here are a few random whisky-inspired thoughts.

Last night was a very late one. The lab is remote and surrounded by fields which often have cattle, and I have a leather jacket so I'm wary of them and leave them alone. Last night they crossed the line. I went out for a smoke in total darkness, the cows were upwind of me and at least a hundred yards away. I lit up and one of the cheeky buggers coughed.

It's a good thing it's remote. The spectacle of me calling across a dark field 'Yeah? Well, I'm wearing your mum', was not an edifying one. He asked for it.

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Then there was the article in New Scientist this week about tree planting. I'm very much in favour of tree planting. Not for any deep ecological reasons, I just like forests. The trees alongside the field beside the lab also cut down the noise from the dual carriageway and reduce the wind.

That, it seems, is the problem. the Tree Greenies are in conflict with the Wind Greenies because the trees slow down the wind for those generators. The Wind Greenies want to cut carbon emissions by building lots of complex machinery with steel and electronics and concrete and transport and maintenance, while the Tree Greenies want to cut them by planting trees to soak up the CO2. If it comes down to a fight, I'm with the Tree Greenies. Trees don't need maintenance or factories, birds and squirrels and other things can live in them, they are useful when you've finished with them and they look nice. The very opposite of the Wind Greenies and their steel garden ornaments. Oh, and one more difference. Trees actually work.

The Coagulation, with politician logic, want to cut down the trees and put up windmills instead. There is nothing wrong with our leadership that couldn't be put right with a two-pound lump hammer and a good stout hickory bat.

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I'm still baffled by the 'level playing field' demand put out by pubs when that smoking ban came in. Pubs are, on the whole, in denial that the smoking ban is what's killing them. Yet when the ban started, pubs demanded that private clubs should not be exempted from it. They wanted a 'level playing field'.

If the pubs are so popular now with nonsmokers, why would they want their competition - clubs - to have that advantage too? Surely if they believed at the start, as they do now, that the smoking ban won't harm trade but smoking will, the sensible thing to do would be to let the competition allow smoking. Then the clubs would be deserted by nonsmokers and fail, while the pubs would be full of nonsmokers and thrive.

Didn't the pubs think that would happen? Or did they know full well at the time that most of their customers were smokers and the ban would kill their business? That would make the 'level playing field' logical because we'd all now have private smokers clubs if we were allowed to. We'd all be out of sight of the professionally offended. They'd never even know we were there. Antismokers won't allow that. They can't whine about us if they can't see us.

It didn't work anyway. We just set up our own places which are neither pubs nor clubs.

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A fantasy: Visiting a doctor's surgery (which I don't do. With my lifestyle I'd never get out without at least fifteen different kinds of pill, all of which would enrich the local sewage works as soon as I got them home).

Doctor: Do you smoke?

Me: You're not supposed to allow that indoors.

Doctor: We don't.

Me: Then why offer? If you do it again I'll have to report you.

Doctor: I see. Do you drink?

Me: Obviously. I'd dehydrate if I didn't.

Doctor: No - I mean do you drink alcohol?

Me: Define 'alcohol'.

Doctor: Um... alcoholic drinks, you know...

Me: Methanol, ethanol, butanol, propanol? What's the chemical formula and structure of this alcohol and what are the associated secondary fermentation products in this stuff you want me to drink?

Doctor: Oh, God... What's wrong with you?

Me: Nothing. I'm only here because it's more fun than the pub.



I don't go to dentists either.

Not because they won't treat smokers, but then we're not the only ones to be denied treatment these days. In fact, the list of people who the NHS don't want to treat has nearly sixty million names on it now. Why are you paying for it?


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I keep meaning to update my blogroll but people keep leaving and coming back. One day it'll all settle down. Any I take out will go into the Hibernation Corner list so I'll know if they pop up again. What irks me is not the bloggers leaving - it's an individual choice - but that I use my list as a starting point to get to other places through other people's lists. I can't list everything or the blog will take all day to load.


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The artist who did the cover for Jessica's Trap has provided me (at extraordinarily reasonable prices) with artwork for advertising cards and bookmarks. I could print them myself but my printer is very slow on high quality so it makes more sense to go to VistaPrint. They are ordered. These are for giving away so when they arrive, the bookmarks will go out first. The cards are for the blitz nearer the release date.


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We have Zen aircraft carriers with no aircraft. Is it then an aircraft carrier or merely a floating flat thing? A containerless container ship, perhaps? What is the sound of no aircraft taking off? If an aircraft carrier floats but no aircraft sees it, does it still float - and why? Perhaps they will be used for the Olympic volleyball event because they are bugger all use for anything else.

Perhaps the Coagulation plan to cover them with windmills.

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Another crack in the current Righteous domination. The head of British Airways is openly questioning why we have to have such stringent airport security to please Barry O'Blimey, when the 9/11 plane crashers all took off from within the US. Which has no such checks. Mere weeks ago, nobody would have dared question these diktats, as nobody would have dared openly question the smoking ban. It's coming apart at the seams, Righteous.

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Okay, enough from me. I'll try to be coherent tomorrow night - but no promises.

Morrison's have a sale on several other malts too.