

### A Goode Year - 2012

by Francis Goode

www.francisgoode.com

Copyright 2012 Francis Goode

Smashwords Edition

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License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Introduction

The dam (short story)

What the Greeks gave us... and what we've done with it (blog)

Betrayal (short story)

Lost at sea? A tale of two ships on a voyage of discovery (blog)

A step closer to the Higgs Boson? (blog)

Goodenough gets his stripes (short story)

Einstein and Spinoza (blog)

Beyond the Olympics – a golden future for society? (blog)

Presidential election 2012 (blog)

Family business (short story)

Olympic legacy? (blog)

A century of symbols (blog)

The birthday shoes (short story)

Golden age and national shame (blog)

Oaths and other ethical issues (blog)

Why stop at trading carbon emissions? (blog)

The young artist (short story)

Price, value and hunger (blog)

Universe in reverse (blog)

Shadow killer (short story)

Other philosophical engineers (or engineering philosophers?) (blog)

What's so good about rational anyway? (blog)

Away with all flesh (short story)

Bookend

# Introduction

So, another year flies past outside our cave. The landscape that Spinny and I look out over has donned its winter garb. Naked lines of stumpy vines stretch out across the empty fields and offer no cover for the hares to hide from trigger-happy huntsmen, whose shotgun retorts rumble around the valley like thunder. But during the long nights, when moonlight sparkles in the frost and mirrors the glimmering stars in the clear sky above, peace reigns.

"Well, we've survived another year," says Spinny cheerfully, working on a wonderful new web design in the darkness of the cave. The slender strands of silk glimmer in the firelight as a mournful owl's hoot drifts in from the fields - still no respite for the poor hares out there.

"Survived, yes... I suppose we must have. Another year older, another year wiser..."

"Oh? Do you think we are, really?" Spinny asks, a little sharply.

"Older? Yes, I should say so." I certainly feel it.

Spinny sighs. "No, I mean, are we really any wiser?"

I give the fire a stir. Sparks fly and a log crackles. How do you measure wisdom? Is there a healthy amount one should aim to accumulate in a year? Perhaps that's something else the government should set a target for.

"Well," I respond at last. "If not wiser, at least I think we understand a little more."

"Possibly."

Spinny glances around at the stacks of books in every corner of the cave, those little receptacles of human knowledge, storing and transmitting the sciences over the centuries. At some point in the last few hundred years there must have been a moment when the number of books in existence contained exactly the amount of knowledge that one person could read in a lifetime. Since then they've contained more knowledge than anyone could accumulate in a lifetime. That was the moment when cooperation became the only possible way for mankind to advance. We truly became dependent on one other. And then came the internet...

"Possibly?"

"Well, I suppose you must have acquired some knowledge from all these books you read." Spinny begins to unpick a cocooned fly that's attached to the web. "But does knowledge always equate to understanding?"

That makes me think of the great philosopher Baruch de Spinoza and his three types of knowledge. The first type comprises the assortment of simple ideas we use to get us through our daily lives with minimal mental effort, not bothering to separate out valid observations from the prejudices, rumours and lazy assumptions we pick up along the way. We begin to acquire the second type of knowledge when we use our gifts of rational thought and observation to work out what's really happening around us in a systematic way. And it's then that the third type of knowledge arrives, by intuition or subconscious processes, to give us true understanding.

"Do you mean Spinoza's third type of knowledge?" I ask.

Spinny seems to ignore my question, quietly absorbed in unwrapping and chewing on the fly. I try again.

"You mean that knowledge is something we can take in, from books, for example. But understanding is generated from within, once we've taken in enough knowledge. Is that it?"

Spinny has eaten enough. Playing out a length of silk the spider drops down elegantly onto the rock beside me. "Maybe."

A thought strikes me. "Like gossamer?"

Dozens of pairs of eyes look up in surprise. "Like gossamer? Of course I like it. Couldn't live without it."

That's true. Weight for weight, these wonderfully processed strands of protein are five times stronger than steel. They provide Spinny and other spiders with homes, nets, traps, intruder alarms, signalling wires and paragliders. But I suspect Spinny is deliberately misunderstanding me.

"No," I laugh. "I meant that understanding is like gossamer, something that's produced inside you. Understanding is made from knowledge you've taken in, like gossamer's produced from the protein you get by eating flies."

"So, in this rather obscure analogy of yours, you're saying my flies are the equivalent of your books?"

I shift a little uneasily. When Spinny puts it like that, it does all seem a little far-fetched. I decide to shift the conversation back to safer ground.

"I like gossamer, too. Especially your webs in the early morning dew. They're so beautiful, it's so good of you to share them with us."

"Share them with you?"

"Yes. Little works of art that you share with us every morning. They're so nice to see."

"Are they? I never realised." Spinny frowns and gazes up at the wisps of Milky Way in the cloudless sky. "I thought you bipeds hated them because they get tangled in your hair."

"Well, I suppose some of us do. But just because some people don't like them, doesn't mean you should stop sharing them with us."

"Mmm, I suppose you could be right." From Spinny, that's high praise. "But then, you should share things, too."

"Me? What have I got to share?"

"Your scribblings."

"Oh. Them."

"You never know. Someone, somewhere might appreciate them."

"I doubt it."

"I doubted that anyone likes my webs."

"Which scribblings do you think I should share?"

"Well, all those short stories you've written this year. Somebody might like to look at one or two of them. Then there are the blogs on our website, of course."

"Yes, I see. And the blogs those kind people at the Institution of Engineering and Technology allow me to publish on their Engineering and Technology Magazine site."

"There you are then. You could put all that stuff together and publish it as an e-book, or something like that."

I consider the idea for a moment. An e-book is a wonderful thing, a gossamer thread, lighter than air that you set free to blow away on the wind. Who knows where it might settle, or who might come across it?

"I could send it out to friends. Give them something to read during their dark holiday nights."

"Why not?"

Why not indeed.

We hope you find something to enjoy here. If not, just comb us out of your hair.

Francis Goode and Spinny

December 2012

back to contents

# The dam

A short morality tale for our times.

The battered old river cruiser slipped easily downstream, its engine needed only to negotiate the occasional rocks and rapids. For the two men lounging on deck, their day's work done, the gentle chugging could barely be heard above the raucous screeches and whistles coming from the dense forest on either side. But it was loud enough to disturb some huge bird from its perch in a nearby branch. With a clatter of wings and an ear-piercing screech of alarm, it took flight and flapped ponderously over the boat. Harry Olsen leant back to watch the explosion of colour overhead. He grinned as he extracted the stump of a large Havana cigar from his mouth.

'Knew I should've brought my gun.'

His companion squinted to follow the bird's flight along the river towards the deep V-shaped crevice at the bend.

'Yeah, maybe you should've, Harry.' Al Conway wiped his brow with a check shirt sleeve. 'Sure is beautiful here, though. Makes me almost sad to think what's going to happen to it.'

'Sad? Hell, you've got that wrong, I mean sure, it's pretty, but who the heck ever gets to see it? Not you, for certain, if this project hadn't brought you here. At least now you get to enjoy it, for a year or so. And after that, you'll have some great memories.'

Al let out a little laugh. 'Yeah, you're right. I guess I'm the lucky one. As you say, not many people get to visit paradise. And get paid for it.'

'Too right.'

Harry removed his baseball cap and wiped his brow with the sleeve of his safari jacket. For a moment his short cropped hairs glistened like tiny needles in the rays of the setting sun.

Al wiped his own brow again. 'All the same, I kinda feel for those people back there. They'll lose a lot.'

'They seemed happy enough today.'

'Yeah, well you do a darn fine job of talking things up, Harry. The presents you brought didn't do any harm, either. But still, do you think they really took on board exactly what's happening here?'

'Well, that's their look out. But I reckon that Head Man, Kanto or whatever his name is, got the picture OK. He understands that once they're resettled they'll have everything they need. Water, electricity, schools, everything. Things can only get better for these people.'

'They seemed more bothered about their darn burial grounds than water and schools.'

'Yeah, well, maybe a taste of progress will sort that out for them.'

The boat accelerated as the river narrowed in the approach to the canyon. Steep cliffs rose up a hundred metres on either side. Harry chuckled.

'It's going to be quite a sight, Al, that gap all filled in with concrete. Can you picture that?'

Al nodded and looked back at the valley they'd come along. He struggled to imagine it under a hundred metres of water.

'Kanto's son didn't seem so happy, either. I'm not sure he bought your line about them being equal partners in all this.'

He sensed the impatient movement beside him as Harry tossed the remains of his cigar into the river. A shoal of inquisitive silver red fish examined it, then darted away in disgust.

'Yeah, well, he's not the Head Man, is he? And even if they don't all like it, so what? How many of them are there? A couple of thousand, maybe. Against ten million in the city who'll benefit from the electricity we'll provide. Chicken shit. No contest. This is our duty, Al. Progress, a better world.'

***

'So, lady and gentleman, the climax of today's tour, see for yourself the great progress we're making.'

Harry stepped back from the railing of the viewing platform to let the VIPs see the feverish activity of earth movers, caterpillar trucks and tractors below. Clouds of dust hung over the site, and along the newly built highway a fleet of cement mixers queued to discharge their loads into the flexible pipes that spewed a constant stream of concrete onto the site.

'But you're behind schedule,' said the Japanese banker who hadn't spoken all afternoon.

Harry forced himself to smile. 'Just a little, sure. But you see we're working damn hard to catch up. Look there, that's over a thousand cubic metres of concrete per hour going in, night and day, twenty-four seven.'

'But how long behind schedule?' pressed the banker.

Harry chewed on his cigar. This was the part of the job he hated most. 'Investor relations,' they called it. And a project this size meant many investors.

'We're on it. Look, we've paralleled up some activities. See?' He indicated the spidery network of scaffolding rising above the wet concrete. 'They're putting up the shuttering for the next level already. With a fair wind, we'll be back on schedule next month.'

'That's a lot of manpower. Are you on budget?' asked the Chinese financier.

Harry leaned towards the group and tapped his nose. 'Ah, that's the beauty of it. We're using local people, the indigenous population. I call them our monkey men. They've been climbing trees all their lives - and they work for peanuts!'

He leant back to enjoy their ripple of laughter. He knew that one would do the trick, break the ice. He used it on all the visits.

The German capitalist frowned. 'Is it not dangerous working like that? What about the health and safety risks?'

Harry nodded sagely. 'Sure, sure. We meet all the health regulations those guys have ever written down. No risk of lawsuits there. Or any sort of suits, if you see what I mean.' Another titter of laughter, and they were still smiling as they returned to the fleet of SUVs waiting to whisk them back to the city. Harry waved them off with a sigh of relief.

He heard the first ominous creak as they disappeared. Then came a huge ripping like tearing cloth and an ear-splitting clatter that echoed round the valley. When he got down to the site it was all over. Lost in the clouds of dust, the men were milling around, leaderless, while concrete continued to belch out of the pipes. It filled in the little depressions that had appeared in the smooth surface. The scaffolding had disappeared.

Al came across as he leapt down from his truck. Harry grabbed his sleeve.

'What the hell happened?'

Al looked startled, like a bird. 'I don't know, Boss. The scaffolding just gave way. Maybe they didn't know how to fix it up properly.'

Harry peered into the vast liquid pool. There was no longer any trace of a disturbance.

'Oh my God. And they're all...'

'Yeah, they're all down there. Every one of them. We'll have to get them out, Harry.'

'And how are we going to do that?'

Al ran a hand over his head. 'I don't know... just pull them out, I guess.'

Harry shook his head. 'We don't have the equipment. In fact, I don't even know what equipment to use to fish two dozen corpses out of quick setting cement.'

'Corpses?'

'They don't stand a chance, Al. They're gone.'

Al put both hands to his face. 'But still, we've got to get them out...'

Harry pulled him away from the group that had gathered round, waiting for orders. He whispered sharply in Al's ear.

'Sure. We can stop the concrete fill, find some way to fish around in there and pull them out. It'll probably mean using the bulldozers that are working on the road construction. Then we'll have lost the continuous flow so we'll have to dig out all the concrete we've laid so far and start all over again. I reckon that's twelve to fifteen days off our schedule. Is that what you want? '

Al shook his head, slowly. 'You're not saying we just carry on, and leave them?'

Harry's eyes narrowed. 'What's the risk, Al?'

'Well, I guess the families will be ....'

'No, I mean to the structure. Will it be weakened?'

Al rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. 'Sure, it'll be weakened. But the margins we've put on the volumes means it should be OK. A few bodies scattered through it... yeah, I reckon that's OK.'

Harry squeezed Al's arm. 'You sure?'

'Well, I guess there'd be a risk if they were all sticking together in one lump, that would make a dangerously big flaw. But I guess if they're just scattered...'

'Like blueberries in a muffin?'

'Guess so.'

'Then we leave it. Tell the men it's double pay today to carry on. And then find us a boat. We'd better square this with the Head Man.'

The news travelled fast. Mournful ululations greeted them as they arrived at the village. The people sat on the ground in small circles, wailing and hitting their faces. Kanto, the Head Man, detached himself from a group and led the way, silent and grim faced, to their meeting place.

'Kanto, first off I want to say how sorry we all are...'

'You promised us the work is safe.'

Harry took off his hat and wiped his head.

'Sure, well it is. Normally. Maybe some of your guys made a mistake...'

'No! You will not blame the dead.'

Silence fell between them. The ululations vibrated in the hot air.

'Kanto, please, we want to do the right thing, here.'

'Where are the bodies? When will you bring the bodies? We must give them a proper burial.'

Harry squirmed. 'That's what I need to talk to you about...

The old man folded his arms. 'No, no talk. Just bring bodies now, talk later. First we honour dead and give them proper burial on sacred land.'

Harry put a hand towards his jacket pocket. He hesitated, then pulled out an envelope. Kanto's eyes widened slightly, just enough to give Harry confidence to go on.

'Kanto, I want you to take this. It's for all the people here who have suffered - parents, wives, children, whatever. It's our way of saying we're sorry about what happened.' He added quickly, 'not that we're saying we in any way accept responsibility for it, I just mean we truly regret the accident that occurred.'

The chief's eyes fixed on the envelope, but he made no move.

'We must bury our dead in the sacred place. It is said, that when troubles come to our villages, the bones of our ancestors will rise up and help us.'

'Well, you know I'm sorry, but that's really not possible. I really, really want to help, but...'

Harry shrugged, and made a slight movement as if to put the envelope back in his pocket.

'Wait!'

Kanto moistened his lips. 'It is true. You must make reparations in whatever form you can. We will accept your symbol of repentance in the spirit you offer it.'

He reached out and grabbed the envelope, but Harry still held on to it.

'Kanto, you understand that we take no responsibility for what happened, and that in accepting this reparation you renounce any claim by your people against us. Agreed?'

The Head Man licked his lips, then nodded. 'What's done is done. The past cannot be undone. We have to travel forward.'

He took the envelope.

***

Harry opened his site office door and beckoned in the visitors.

'Hi guys. Hey, I love the suit, Kanto.'

'Thank you,' the Head Man beamed. 'It is a little like yours, no?'

'Oh, much smarter than mine,' laughed Harry.

Tokan crept in behind his father, in his usual cut-off jeans and tee-shirt.

'So, Al gave you the tour. You see the main construction's just about finished. What do you think? '

'It is very impressive, Mr Harry. Very impressive indeed.'

'Here have a drink.' Harry pulled a bottle of whisky and two glasses from his drawer.

'You having one, Tokan?'

Kanto answered for his son. 'No, he does not drink.'

'I will wait for you outside, father.'

The young man left, closing the door a little too firmly behind him.

Harry shrugged. 'Doesn't seem too happy, your son.'

'Excuse him. He is young. He is not understanding the way of the world.'

'Sure. Anyway, you know we'll soon be closing the sluices. The river will be blocked and the valley will start filling up. It's time for your people to move on.'

Kanto emptied the glass and offered it for a refill.

'Understood, Mr Harry. You know, we have been scouting higher ground already, we know good places that will be above the new water level.'

Harry topped up the glasses.

'Ah, now, that's something we need to talk about. You can't go to the higher ground, I'm afraid. Hey, did I show you this already?'

He turned round the large screen on his desk. Kanto examined the artist's impression of a gleaming lake-side hotel complex, surrounded by verdant hills and with boats and windsurfers idling in the foreground.

'That's very nice, Mr Harry. Where is it?'

Harry grinned, jerking his thumb backwards towards his window.

'Right here, Kanto. In about six months' time. You see, this project isn't just about electricity. We're creating the largest man-made lake, and the most valuable recreational resource, on the continent. We envision a whole series of leisure complexes running round the edge of the lake, starting right here.'

Kanto emptied his glass as he contemplated the news. 'So you are saying, there's no room for us. Where are we going to live?'

Harry stood up and motioned to Kanto to join him by the window. He pointed down the steep hill towards the new elevated highway that ran alongside the river.

'Down there. We're going to build you a brand new town, all to yourselves.'

Kanto frowned. 'But where? There is no room, just the highway and the river take up all the valley.'

Harry grinned and slapped Kanto's shoulder. 'But the river won't be there, will it? When we close the sluices, no more river. Plenty of space.'

'You cannot build on a wet river bed.'

'No, no of course not straight away. We'll let it dry out first. Put up temporary housing, just to tide us all over, and then construct a proper town for you later. Electricity, water, everything. Just think of it.'

The Head Man shook his head. 'I don't see it. What will we do down there? How to feed ourselves? How pay for this electricity and water? Even you don't use our men for work any more.'

'Hey, don't worry, there'll be jobs once the hotels open. Sure, just at the moment it's skilled men we need, from the city, for the electrics and all that. Here, let me top you up. But actually, there is something we do need your people to do.'

Kanto nodded, a little unsteady. 'That is good. Our men are getting restless.'

Harry scratched his face. 'Ah, it's not work for the men, exactly. You see, the guys coming here from the city, they can't bring wives and girlfriends with them. You get my point?'

Kanto frowned, swayed, then shook his head.

'Are you saying...? You want to turn our women and daughters into...'

'Hey, hey, calm down, no sweat. It's just an idea, that's all. I just thought, you guys need the money, my guys need... well, what they need. Business, that's all.'

From somewhere, an envelope had appeared in his hand.

Kanto eyed it, and eyed Harry. 'Business. That's all?'

Harry nodded. Kanto took the envelope.

***

A grinding of gears announced the SUV's arrival at Harry's door. He looked out to see Kanto jump down and wave, a huge grin on his face.

'Like it, Mr Harry? Like yours, yes?'

Harry closed his eyes and groaned. This he did not need. Less than a month till the grand opening, the culmination of two years' work. His inbox was full of snagging lists, invitation lists, to do lists and just about every other darn list he could think of. So much achieved: the dam complete, lake full, turbines tested, hotels gleaming, their jetties already busy with yachts and cruisers awaiting their first hire; but one cock-up could ruin it all. And with the guests he was expecting - bankers, investors, government ministers - he could leave nothing to chance.

'Hi. What brings you here?'

Kanto sidled up to Harry and glanced over his shoulder. 'A delicate, matter, Mr Harry. Perhaps we go inside and discuss over a little drink, yes?'

Harry sighed and led him in. Kanto downed the first glass and waited for the second one to be poured before he spoke.

'It's my people, Mr Harry. They are unhappy. We are living in a shanty town, Mr Harry, built on wet ground, underneath a highway. It is not good.'

Harry glanced at his lap-top. Another five emails since Kanto arrived. One was from the Prime Minister's office.

'Yes, I know Kanto, I'm very sorry, but you must understand the pressure we're under to get everything ready for the official opening. After that we will work on your town, I promise.'

'It is not just that, Mr Harry. The people are hungry, and also sick. Diseases we've never seen before. Your people give them to our women, and they give them to us.'

Harry made a dismissive gesture. 'Kanto, you can easily get treatment...'

'Yes, Mr Harry. But your diseases need your medicines. They cost money. Lots of money.'

Harry glanced again at his rapidly filling inbox. He sighed, crossed to the safe and took out a handful of notes. Kanto's face lit up.

Harry held onto the notes. 'But there's one thing I need from you, Kanto. Your people have been hanging around the town, begging and stuff. We can't have that when our guests arrive, OK?'

'But Mr Harry...'

Harry pulled back the banknotes. 'Just sort it, yeah?'

Kanto nodded, took the notes and held out his glass.

***

'So, what it is?' asked Harry as Al stopped their truck at the foot of the dam. 'It had better be important as I've got a pile of stuff that needs attention.'

Al pointed at the water gushing out of a sluice pipe.

Harry frowned. 'So? Why's the sluice gate open? They should all be closed.'

'They are. That's the problem.'

'I don't understand.'

'Ingress of water. It's penetrating the sluices, bypassing the inlet valves somehow.'

'Serious?'

Al shrugged. 'Hard to say, but we should get it checked. We'll need divers to take a look.'

'Shit. OK, but after the weekend, yeah? Just keep it quiet. I don't want our guests disturbed... Shit, what was that?'

Al looked to see what Harry was peering at. 'What?'

Harry squinted, stared at the end of the pipe, then shook his head. 'Oh, nothing, I'm just seeing things. Thought I saw a lump of something fall out of the pipe.'

Al laughed and patted his arm. 'You're cracking up, Harry. Can't take the pressure.'

Harry grinned. 'Yeah, I think you're right. Boy, will I be glad when this weekend's over. Anyway, let's get back.'

'Sure... Hang on, who's that?'

A figure striding across the river bed came straight towards their truck. Harry groaned, and leaned out of the window.

'What can I do for you, Tokan?'

The boy stood tense, fists balled at his sides, his mouth working as he sought the right words.

'The first thing you can do,' he said finally, 'is get out of that vehicle and stand up when you talk to the Head Man.'

Harry opened the door and got out slowly. 'What do you mean, Tokan? Where's your father?'

He saw the boy's eyes were red.

'He is dead. He crashed that stupid vehicle you gave him.'

Harry protested. 'I never gave it to him. He bought it...'

'Yes, bought it with the bribes you've been giving him.'

'There were no bribes. I gave money for your people. If he didn't pass it all on then what does that say about him?'

'I am not here to blame the dead. I am here to warn you. My people are very angry. They say you've taken everything, our homes, our living, our river, our fish.'

'We've given you new homes, and money, and electricity...'

'And sickness and alcohol and drugs. We've had enough. After my father's burial we had a meeting. We know he thought you a good man, but we think he was mistaken. You deceived him.'

'Tokan, that's just not...'

The boy held up a hand.

'So we have decided. We go back up into the hills. If we can't stay by the river, we'll go to the lake. To live down there is not to live at all.'

He gestured with his head towards the shacks squatting under the roadway.

'I'm sorry, but you can't do that. All this is private property now, granted to my company by the government.'

'Your government, not ours. It is our land, and we will take it.'

'Look, Tokan, I see you're upset about your father. I want us to be friends, so why don't you take some time, sort things out in your head, and come and see me again later.'

Tokan shook his head. 'No. The next time you see me will be when we come to reclaim our land.'

Harry frowned. He shifted his weight, spreading his feet a little wider and hitching his thumbs into his belt. The movement opened up his jacket to reveal the pistol tucked into his waistband.

'Listen, kid. I want you to go now and take this message for all your people. I need you all to stay away from the town, OK? Especially in the next few days. We've got seriously important people coming and I'll do all it takes to keep it clean for them. Understand?'

Tokan glanced at the weapon and sneered. 'Yes, I understand. But there's something you must understand, too. You will not divide us any more. We are one people. We stick together.'

As Al drove back up the hillside, the words echoed in Harry's mind. Something worried him that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

***

The boy walked slowly beside the trickle that the old river had become, as if his shoulders bore a heavy weight. His mouth worked, silently incanting the ancient chants, praying to his ancestors for guidance. Wondering whether his first act as new leader of his people might also be his last.

An object caught his eye, pure white, caught up in the rocks of the river bed. He bent to examine it. The bone was human, probably from an arm. Looking around he found another arm bone, then a rib. Then a skull.

_'When the village is in trouble, the bones of the ancestors will rise up to help us_.' How many times had he repeated the old saying? Had he ever really believed it? But that didn't matter now. His prayer was answered. Gathering up the bones, he strode with purpose back to the shanty town.

***

On a glorious afternoon, Harry closed his eyes and silently thanked the gods that shone down on him as brightly as the sun that glinted in the ripples on the lake. The plan had run like clockwork: speeches uttered, ribbons cut and switches ceremoniously thrown. Ministers, diplomats and financiers had toasted his team's achievements, and now stayed on to enjoy the facilities of the new lake. Lazy white foam marked the tracks of yachts and jet skis, the only disturbances on the calm water. Uniformed security guards dozed under the trees of the hotel car park among the Mercedes and BMWs.

Glass in hand, Harry surveyed all that he was master of and contemplated whether he might also take the afternoon off to enjoy the moment. But the thought was shattered by the crash of the door swinging open.

'Sorry to disturb you, Boss.' Al didn't wait for an invitation. 'I thought you ought to know, the flow through the sluices is increasing. We need to send some divers down now to check it out.'

Harry swore. He'd known it was all going too well. 'So much for my afternoon on the lake. Come on, you can drive me down and we'll take a look.'

They spotted the crowd before they could climb into the truck. In front was Tokan, followed by the menfolk bearing spears, bows and arrows. Women brought up the rear with bundles on their heads and children in their arms.

'Holy shit, what's going on?' said Al.

'Dunno, I'll talk to them. You get the security guys here, now.'

Harry waited in the road, arms akimbo, for the Head Man to come up.

'Where do you think you're going? You're not entering our town.'

'We're not interested in your town. We'll pass through, peacefully, to take up our rightful place in the hills.'

Harry shook his head. 'No way you're passing here. Not today.' He heard a scurry of feet and glanced round to see Al with two dozen uniformed men take up positions at his side.

'See?'

Tokan took a step forward. Now Harry saw it was not weapons he was carrying, but a skull and a bone. He grinned and pulled out his gun. He heard the satisfying clicks of two dozen safety catches coming off behind him.

'Take one more step and someone gets hurt.'

Tokan exchanged some words with the men behind him in their native language. He nodded.

'They say it is better to die than continue living this way. This is not life.'

Harry glanced around again to check his men's positions. He put on a smile.

'Now, Tokan, see sense. We can work all this out. Just give us a couple of days, until everyone's gone.' He gestured towards the lake. 'These are important people, we don't want to upset their weekend, do we?'

Tokan looked out over the lake, then spat at Harry's feet.

'Tokan, I thought we were agreed...'

The young man narrowed his eyes. 'If we agreed it was because of what you promised. When you first came to our village, you said we were equal partners in this.'

Harry let out a dry laugh.

'Equal partners, eh? In this? Do you see that dam, boy? Do you know what went into making it? Do you even know what it takes to hold back over a hundred cubic kilometres of water? And you imagine you're an equal partner in all we've achieved here?' He leaned forward and prodded Tokan's chest. 'Can you imagine the pressure we're holding back at the base of that dam? It would crush you and your people, like that. And we're the ones who resist that pressure. Could your people do that?'

Tokan said nothing. Harry felt a trembling in his legs. Shit! Was he losing his nerve?

He carried on. 'So yeah, Mister, perhaps before there was a dam, we were equal. But now that's changed, we have everything that we want, and we intend to keep it that way.'

The trembling was coming up from the ground, not his legs.

'Boss,' Al whispered urgently in Harry's ear. 'I think we need to...'

'Shut up! Let me deal with these people,' Harry snapped. 'So, Tokan, you see the situation. Equal? I don't think so. And if you really want to pitch your people with knives and arrows and ... and skulls and bones against my men with guns, then on your own head be it.'

Tokan's face set like stone. He lifted up his trophies. 'We are not scared of you. These are the bones of our ancestors. They have risen up to rescue my people in times of trouble.'

Harry laughed, but Al took a step forward. 'Where did you get these, Tokan?' he asked quietly.

Tokan jerked his head back. 'They rose up in the river, like it was foretold.'

'Christ,' said Al. 'The bodies in the concrete...'

'My people stick together, in this life and the next.'

The ground shook, harder and longer than before.

'There must be a bloody great cavity down there, wearing away...'

Then came the explosion. As it reverberated around the valley, Harry glanced back to see which of his men had fired. But it wasn't a gunshot. A menacing rumble came from down below, followed by what sounded like a waterfall. He rushed to the view point. The steady flow of water had become a torrent, gushing through the hole that opened up at the foot of the dam. The flood swept down the old river bed, brushing aside the flimsy shacks under the highway.

As they watched in shocked silence, the awful truth dawned on Harry.

'Oh my God.'

He race through the hotel grounds to the water front, jumped down onto a floating jetty and examined the tide mark on the wall. The water had already dropped half a metre. Out on the lake, the water borne VIPs were unable to see the dam or sense the falling water level. Some looked around, wondering where the noises had come from.

Harry waved frantically and shouted. 'Clear the lake! For god's sake, clear the lake!'

The Japanese banker waved back politely. Harry's words had not carried. It was only after the next explosion, when the level started dropping visibly, did they realise what was happening. Too late. The currents were too strong to escape. A huge eddy swirled by the dam, syphoning water down in a great water spout. Harry saw the German capitalist frantically pulling on a lifejacket as the Chinese financier jumped in the water and tried to swim to shore.

Harry could only look on as, one by one, the boats bearing investors, bankers and ministers were sucked down into the depths, flushed out through the hole and spewed back down to the city from which they had come. Tokan and his people also looked on, but what they saw was the bones of their dead honouring their promise to give them back their valley.

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# What the Greeks gave us... and what we've done with it

From the Philosophical Engineer blog on the IET's Engineering & Technology Magazine website. Posted 20 July.

What did the ancient Greeks ever do for us? (as John Cleese might have put it.) Now, I trust all you good engineers have no trouble answering that one, with exalted names such as Archimedes, Pythagoras and Euclid springing spontaneously to mind, together with their many discoveries and the myriad Greek terms that still makes up a significant portion of our scientific vocabulary.

But right now, for the general population - the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus, who can only watch as dark-tinted limos whisk athletes past him along the ZIL lanes – the immediate response will be quite a different one. The Olympic games are dominating all our thoughts.

Our modern version of the games may share a common spirit with the original ones, but would have raised an eyebrow or two among the ancients. They would be most surprised to see that women compete and that modern athletes wear clothes (is there a connection?). And while people travelled from all over Greece to watch or participate in the original games, they were confined to Greeks. Now, of course, our global transport system (a true engineering wonder) gathers athletes and spectators from all corners of the globe; and even those who can't attend in person feel part of the spectacle, thanks to our telecommunications networks. And the drama of these great events is heightened further by our ability to measure lengths, heights and times with mind-boggingly fine precision using modern technology. Yes, we engineers may feel justly proud of our contributions to bringing this ancient tradition into the modern world.

But there's another ancient Greek ideal that's been revived in recent centuries and dominates our news agenda today. But as with the Olympics, our modern take on Democracy might be quite unrecognisable to the ancients. Again, women can now take part (although I'm not sure if there's been as dramatic a change in the dress code). And again, engineering has played a pivotal role in updating democracy for a more inclusive age. For over a century, technology has brought our decision makers ever closer to us: from delivering written words a day or so after they were uttered to hearig the spoken words in our own sitting rooms; from pictures on cinema screens to interactive images piped onto screens in our houses, bags and pockets. But mostly, these developments improved communications in one direction only: outwards, to us. While we received ever more intimate views of our elected representatives/leaders* (*delete as appropriate), we had few opportunities to respond and react. And this gave politicians more opportunities to control and massage the messages so delivered. Techniques originally developed to sell us products from soft drinks to insurance policies were honed to provide ever more sophisticated ways to control our opinions, and influence our voting behaviour. We were un danger of becaming consumers of democracy, not participants - a long way indeed from the ancient Greek idea of democracy. There it may not have been inclusive – only males of high social need apply – but it was participatory. Informed debates led to agreements by mutual consent or, at least, majority view.

But recent years - thanks, once again, to well engineered technology - have seen at least a partial reversal of the drift away from this ideal. The internet, mobile networks and all the social media they support, encourage us all to speak and write where once we were constrained to read and listen. Politicians and their friends no longer control communications. Arab Springers, the Indignants in Europe and Occupiers in America and have all used the new media to organise, mobilise and protest – with some stunning political results.

While we may not approve of all the ways our technology is being used, perhaps we what can agree is that, by putting this communication technology into the hands and pockets of ordinary people all around the world, we are helping to nudge our democratic processes back a little towards their original ideals. And that's a Greek revival we should celebrate more than once every four years.

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# Betrayal

A darker short story, a tale of obsession set in near-future London.

We all draw lines between the people and events in our lives, searching for patterns, reasons, explanations. We make them straight, the shortest path from cause to effect. So when I saw Mikhel in the park with Pavel, on that bright March afternoon, I chose to draw the shortest, straightest line. The one that would divide us for ever.

Mikhel's eyes first caught mine over the pint of Guinness he handed me. Sparkling blue chips of ice, they held mine for a heartbeat longer than necessary. Warm finger tips contrasted with the cool mist on the glass. 'Anything else I can do for you?' he asked and flashed me that smile for the first time and I mumbled 'no, thanks' and turned away, confused, to rejoin Fran at our corner table.

The Crystal Palace was no gay pub, but an old-style London boozer with stained glass windows and faded velour seating. A million miles from our usual scene, a refuge when we needed each other's support, usually after another disastrous episode in our chaotic love lives. The last place we'd look for romance. But that evening, as Fran moaned on about her girlfriend's departure to Dubai on a lucrative nursing contract, she saw my mind was elsewhere.

'He's looking at you, too, you know,' she whispered with her hint of Irish brogue.

'Who is?'

She ignored my feeble pretence. 'Not bad looking, if you like that sort of thing. Funny eyebrows, though. Or should I say eyebrow, singular? A great hairy centipede crawling across his head.'

Fran needed a wicked sense of humour to survive. For a dumpy, myopic dyke working as a senior nurse on a cancer ward, laughter is a lifeline.

'Maybe a bit on the short side, though?' she ploughed on. 'Quite stocky, I'd say.'

'Ssh, Fran, for God's sake. He'll hear.' The pub was almost empty as usual, struggling to survive the aftermath of the 2013 economic restructuring. Fifty percent unemployment is good news for cheap booze stores, but bad for pubs. I steered her back to her own love troubles and pushed the barman from my mind. Until my next round. Seeing his smile again made my heart somersault.

'Same again? Guinness and a Sol?'

He set the Guinness pouring and turned for the bottle. Should I say something? Or would he? Perhaps I'd misinterpreted the whole thing - it wouldn't be the first time. For God's sake, I wasn't even sure he was gay. He took my money and finished off the Guinness, this time placing the glass on the counter, no contact, before bending to fiddle with the cash till. I battled to hide disappointment and prepared to re-engage with Fran's emotional crisis.

'One moment, sir. Your receipt.'

Stupidly, I nearly said it's alright, I didn't need one, but then those eyes met mine again. My hands were full so he leant over the bar and tucked the ticket into my shirt pocket with a wink. It sat there for the rest of the evening, brushing my left nipple, until Fran and I parted. Finally, I yanked it out and read, underneath the usual information, in big, happy, gloopy handwriting, his mobile number.

***

We met in the park as Mikhel told me, laughing, that a pub 'wouldn't be special enough' for our first date. I waited by the boating pond under a clear blue sky, a distant haze hanging over Greenwich Hill, until he strolled up wearing that great tractor beam of a smile. A pale green tee-shirt clung to his thick, but not over developed, torso. Mikhel didn't do gym, he said life's too short, though he enjoyed competitive games. Back home he'd played handball and ice hockey. The lack of opportunity for either was his first disappointment with London.

'You English only play games you invented.'

His laughter lit up my world. In all the times I'd visited that park before I'd never seen such colours. As Mikhel spoke, ripples on the lake shimmered and danced, a myriad stars forming and disappearing on their peaks. Just in their barks, the trees boasted more shades of brown and green and grey than I ever imagined could exist. The flowers became so beautiful I could hardly bear to look for fear of shedding embarrassing tears.

A new life blew in, blasting away the routine and boredom that had crept insidiously into the old one: Mondays to Fridays processing customer data in a cramped stockbroker's office, weekend nights clubbing with Fran, drifting in and out of meaningless relationships. Mikhel changed existence to living. We explored galleries and familiar canvases and carvings leapt out with new meaning, each artwork reflecting some facet of our relationship: tender, witty, caring, erotic. Old films moved me in new ways. The food we shared burst with flavours I'd never known.

He told me about Pavel on our first date. They were old friends and came over to London together.

'He's like a brother,' he added quickly. 'There's nothing else between us.'

I first saw Pavel when I decided to surprise Mikhel with a visit to the Palace when they were both working. Mikhel was coming round after work anyway, but I'd found I could only do so much cooking and preparation in an evening. Anyway, I was missing him. As I pushed open the door I stopped and did a double take. They could indeed have been brothers, their intimacy was so palpable. As Mikhel brushed past to reach a bottle he said something that made them both laugh. I turned and fled the scene, my mind racing. Had Mikhel lied to me all along?

Rushing home, opening the expensive bottle of cabernet sauvignon I'd bought for us to share, I worked through the scenarios. Perhaps they were just friends - very good friends. Perhaps Mikhel would come in that evening, full or remorse, to tell me it was all over. Perhaps, I thought as the clock crawled towards midnight and I poured my third large glass, he wouldn't even bother to come round at all. He'd never been late before.

At half twelve I was just about to give up and call Fran, when a key clattered in the lock. I took another large mouthful of wine and stiffened, my back to the door.

'Hi,' he said.

'Hi.' I didn't move.

Footsteps approached and I felt a hand on my shoulder. Only when he groaned did I turn round.

'Oh my God!'

I jumped up and reached out to his battered face. His sensual lips were swollen and his beautiful eyes half-closed and blood shot.

'What happened? Oh my God, do you need an ambulance?'

'No, but I wouldn't mind a drop of that.'

He nodded towards the near empty bottle as he sat down gingerly. With a pang of guilt, I poured out the remaining drops. He drank with shaking hands.

'It was just lads. They say something rude about Poles and I answer back. I thought it funny, say I'd rather be a pole than a dip-stick.' He touched his cheek and winced. 'Next thing, I'm lying on pavement.'

'How do you feel? You should visit casualty. And report this to the police.'

'For what point? I couldn't identify them, even if cops care enough to do anything. Anyway, compared to home, it's nothing. There more likely it's police themselves who beat you, if you're gay.'

'But they didn't do it because you're gay, but because of your nationality.'

Mikhel smiled, painfully. 'One accident of birth feels much like another when the boots are flying.'

I wanted him to be angry. 'Why do you take this from them? You've as much right here as they have. At least you work for a living.'

'That's the point, isn't it? If we work, they say we're taking their jobs. And if we don't, we're scroungers. Anyway, as for the right to be here, who knows what might happen.'

Next morning I took him back to his place. Pavel freaked out at the sight of Mikhel. I poked around the flat while he fussed with creams and disinfectants. It was worse than I'd feared. Every surface covered with clothes and beer cans, a sink full of crockery. Worst was the all pervading stink of pork and cabbage. I shuddered. The sooner I got Mikhel out the better.

Over dinner that evening I suggested he move in.

'But things are good as they are. Why change?'

'Don't you want to live with me? I mean, all the time?'

'That would be nice, of course. But...'

'But what? Pavel?'

He shrugged. 'Perhaps. He is my oldest friend. Without me, he alone in this city.' His hand reached across to find mine. I continued eating. 'Are you jealous?'

'Perhaps. A little,' I lied. 'Is he gay?'

Mikhel laughed. 'Honest, I not sure. I think he not sure, neither. I never see him with boyfriend, or girlfriend. Look, think of Pavel as... like Fran. Yes? Pavel is my Fran.'

I chewed on this for a moment. 'I don't think it's good for you there. You should stay here.'

'But he can't afford the rent by himself. What he do? Anyway, he worry about what's going to happen.'

'You keep saying something's going to happen.' My irritation snapped. 'What are you talking about?'

His head tilted.

'You not follow news? This deal Europe doing with China to sort out Euro debt.'

'So?'

'So, Britain's not part of it. Your politicians must choose. Swallow their pride and join Europe, or leave and do own deal with China.'

I was losing it. 'Mikhel, why are you going on about that now?'

He took a deep breath. 'If your country leaves the EU, it means Europeans may lose right to live here.'

Now it hit me. Like a jackhammer. 'Oh my God. You mean you could be sent home?'

'It's possible. To your politicians, is simple choice. Let people travel, and commit to Europe money system. Or let money flow free and stop people moving. People or money. And with this government...'

I lurched to my feet and came round the table.

'They'll never send you back.' I kissed his poor, battered head. 'I promise. I won't let them.'

He took hold of my hands. 'Don't make promises you cannot keep, Will.'

***

Fran laughed when, over lunch, I said told her Pavel was 'Mikhel's Fran.'

'I should be so lucky. He's gorgeous.'

That didn't make me feel better. 'Why won't Mikhel move in? I don't know how he stands living with Pavel. It's like the third world there. I'd go mad if I lived with someone like that.'

'Perhaps it suits him. Anyway,' Fran changed the subject. 'I thought you'd both be more worried about this Europe thing.'

'What?'

'Haven't you heard? Announced today. Britain's leaving the EU.'

'God, no.' My mouth dried. 'What does it mean? Will they throw everyone out?'

'Jeez, I hope not. We'd lose half the staff on my ward. They won't chuck out people with jobs.'

'So anyone working will be alright?'

'Yeah, they should be. For now, at least.'

***

I'd never seen Mikhel so down. Or so angry.

'Bloody politicians and bloody island mentality.'

'But you're OK. Fran said. Because you're working.'

'Yes, for now. This just phase one. Repatriating those without means of support, but because I have job I kindly allowed to stay for phase two, take suitability test, prove I am fit and proper person to live in this great land of yours. I wonder if it's worth the bother.'

The words pierced like shards. He saw the fear in my eyes and that great heart of his wouldn't let him carry on. Holding my hands, he said, 'I only said I wonder if _it's_ worth the bother. But I know for sure that you are.'

We held hands as we watched images of dawn raids and orange jump suits. Convoys of coaches heading off to Athens, Bucharest, Lisbon. Families, penniless and homeless, blinked in the sunlight of cities they'd never visited before. Airports filled by those with enough money - or dignity - to make their own way before the knock came. The launch of the illegal alien hotline.

'Seems pretty desperate,' I said.

'They set targets, now they must find the people.'

'God, it's so sick. Do they really expect people to shop their fellow humans?'

Mikhel shrugged. 'Apparently, they can't handle all the calls they get.'

I squeezed his hand. 'Nobody will do that to you, I promise.'

That night they attacked the Crystal Palace. Arriving for his lunch-time shift, Mikhel found the place boarded up and daubed with racist graffiti. Pat, the landlord, was sweeping up jewels of coloured glass and there was genuine sadness in his shake of the head.

'No work here, son. I'm sorry.'

Mikhel didn't understand at first. He said, 'no problem. I help clear up now, you call me when you open again.'

'No son. No more work here, ever.' Pat leant his broom against the bar and reached for a screwed up sheet of paper. 'This came through the window. Last night it was boots and bricks, next time it'll be a firebomb. I'm sorry, lad, but these bastards can close me down. I've got no choice.'

***

The official notice arrived promptly, doubtless thanks to helpful calls on the illegal alien hotline. Mikhel sat on my sofa while I read the document, stunned. Seven days to leave or be deported.

'What will we do?' I whispered.

His great head shook miserably. 'Maybe best I go. You English don't want me here...'

I grabbed at his hand. 'I want you here. I need you.'

He sighed. 'I don't want no bloody orange suit. Anything but that. Maybe best I go.'

I slid to my knees at his feet. 'No, please Mikhel. Don't go. Just... don't.'

He stroked my head, then kissed it.

'OK. We see what to be done,' he whispered, being strong for both of us.

'He says there's a place where people like them stay. A safe house,' I told Fran later.

She looked at me crookedly. 'He won't stay with you?'

'He won't be parted from his precious Pavel.'

'Can't you take them both?'

I shuddered. 'No way. My place is too small, only one bedroom for a start. And then there are Pavel's habits...'

Fran frowned. 'You know, I've heard of those places. Empty properties taken over by local low life who charge the poor sods to hide there, ripping them off for everything they've got. And then they blackmail them to join in their other business lines. Drugs, whores, handling. Whatever.'

'Oh my good God.'

'So,' Fran looked at me intently, choosing her words. 'Maybe it's best, for Mikhel, you know, to leave now. With his dignity intact.'

I could hardly believe it. Did Fran really still not get it? I took a deep breath.

'I love him, Fran. I can't bear the thought of losing him.'

'Yes, I know, darling. But, you know, sometimes...'

Now she was talking to me like I was a patient. Or a child.

'Don't you understand? I need him.'

She squirmed in her seat as if I had said something disgusting.

'What?' I demanded.

'You know, I've heard that before. And I know you mean it now, like you did the other times, but...'

I chewed on my lip. Fran's problem was she hung around too much with losers. Her patients, fag hags... I was probably the only normal friend she had. Probably why she always delighted in spoiling any good thing I had. Anyway, I wasn't interested in discussing it further, I got up and left her to it. As I crashed out of the café, I reached for my phone. The call went to voicemail.

I kept trying all afternoon and into the evening, even as I prepared a meal for two, just in case. By midnight the message was 'voice mailbox full'.

He rang two days later, his voice breathless.

'Listen, I'm in a phone box, can't talk long. They take my mobile and everything. I just call to say I'm alright. I miss you.'

I tried to work out what he was saying.

'Who are they?'

'Shit. Can't talk, got to go. Love you.'

'Mikhel...' I started, but he had gone. I called the displayed number, no reply. I rang again, maybe five times, until someone answered.

'Mikhel?'

'No, mate. This is a phone box.'

'What phone box? Where?'

'Drewers Lane, outside the video shop.'

I was there in fifteen minutes, but Mikhel was long gone. I paced the streets, peering in doorways and side alleys, the whole day. When I got back around midnight I must have fallen asleep on the sofa because that's where I was woken up next morning by the door opening.

It took a while for my brain to connect the abject, filthy figure in the doorway with the object of my desire and frantic searching.

'Hi,' he said, weakly.

I leapt to my feet but didn't approach. Even from a distance the stench turned my stomach.

'Can I come in?'

His glance towards the sofa alarmed me. If he settled there with his matted hair and filthy rags, the smell would linger for weeks.

'Of course, come in,' I said, holding my breath and imitating a hug. 'Let's get you cleaned up, shall we?'

Fighting off a gag reflex I set the bath running, then escaped to the kitchen while he peeled off his rags. He gobbled the biscuits I brought back like they were his first food in days, crumbs speckling the bath foam. I sprayed, sponged and shampooed as he talked.

'We got away. Me, Pavel and other guy. But they took everything. I have nothing.' He stared at the tap like he'd never seen one before.

'Where's Pavel now?'

'He with other guy, stay with friend. They talk about maybe go back home.'

'Oh. But you... You will stay?'

'You still want me to?'

'Of course.' I leaned towards his head and smelt only lavender and citrus shampoo. I kissed it. 'It's so good having you here.'

He slept while I slipped out to buy clothes, throwing his old ones into a skip. When I returned he was hovering in the kitchen, a towel round his middle, looking lost.

'I can't find my clothes.'

I held up the bags. 'Here are your clothes. All new.'

He looked confused as I pulled out polo shirts, jeans and a sweater.

'But what I was wearing... I was going to wash them.'

I took his face in my hands. 'You live here, now, and I'll look after you. A new start, for both of us.'

The next day as I left for work, Mikhel asked if it was safe to be seen around the flat. I paused. He wouldn't be the first young man the neighbours had seen coming and going, but I didn't need to tell him that.

'Just keep a low profile. Maybe stay in. Except to go out for groceries and stuff.'

I reached for my wallet and pulled out two fifties.

He looked down. 'No, I cannot take money.'

'I'm not giving you money. It's house-keeping, that's money to buy stuff. Food and things for the two of us, OK?'

He hesitated, then took the notes.

An unwelcome, familiar smell hit me coming through the door that evening.

'Special treat. Our national dish.' Mikhel beamed from the kitchen doorway, clad in tracksuit bottom and tee-shirt. The table was laid with candles and flowers.

I brought up the subject of the clothes while struggling to keep down a mouthful of fatty pork.

'I bought them using some home-keeping money. You don't mind? They very cheap.'

'Yes, I can see that.'

'The ones you bought me are so nice. I think I keep them for best.'

'They're for you to wear whenever I'm around. Don't you want to look best for me?'

His eyes dropped. 'Of course. So I will wear them more.'

'Good. And I'll get some more. You can't wear the same clothes all the time.'

'Please, Will, you don't have to. I can buy myself some...'

I squeezed his hand. 'Not from the house-keeping. That's for food and stuff. Let me buy them, my treat.'

'I will find work. You cannot keep me.'

'You know that's impossible, now.'

'There's casual work, cash in hand. Pavel say some guys...'

'Forget it. Those jobs are slavery. I won't have my boyfriend wearing himself out doing that. By the way, it's best not to see too much of Pavel. He'll draw attention to himself, and to you, too.'

He stared glumly. 'So, if I don't work or see Pavel, then what I do?'

I glanced around the apartment. 'Well, there's plenty to do keeping this place clean.'

***

'So, you've got what you wanted. Enjoying your happy families?' Fran asked while chewing a bacon butty.

'Yeah, it's good.'

Her hand paused, grease dripping from the white bread slices halfway to her mouth. 'You don't sound so ecstatic about it.'

'It'll be fine. He's just picked up some habits from Pavel. Once that's sorted, and when he's mastered some recipes from the book I gave him, it'll be heaven.'

'You're turning him into your house boy?'

The twinkle in her eye stopped me taking offence. Just.

'Seriously, Fran, it's great having him around.'

'Yes, but seriously, Will, it's not the first time I've heard those words dripping from your honeyed lips.'

Well, I thought, at least it's not bacon fat dripping from them.

A vest caused our first row. Tracksuit pants were bad enough with a tee shirt, but the vest marked a new low. He saw my reaction before I spoke.

'I'm sorry, I meant to change... You're early... I put these on to clean the flat. Don't want to dirty nice clothes.'

I went round opening windows while he changed. Pork and cabbage penetrated every corner.

'Sorry. Is cooking smell too strong? Next time I keep door shut, use extractor...'

'Please, Mikhel, no next time. I'm sure your national dish tastes very nice in some peasant shack, but it doesn't translate so well in London.'

Perhaps I could have phrased it better. His face crumpled.

'I thought it was treat. I cooked it special.'

'Look, if you really want to help, you could do more around the flat. I mean, what's this?' I picked up a tee-shirt abandoned on the sofa. 'Is it so hard to put away?'

He grabbed the shirt and turned away, muttering under his breath. I wasn't having that, not in my own home.

'Sorry, Mikhel, what was that?'

He turned back, his blue eyes now aflame. 'I said, you're worse than bloody Pavel.'

'What the hell does that mean?'

'It means, he always going on, tidy this, put away that. But at least he do it with smile on face. You so bloody miserable all the time. God, I don't know if I can stand it. I really bloody don't!'

So, at least we knew where we stood. I spoke calmly, maybe even coldly. 'Well, Mikhel, I'm sorry if my home doesn't suit you. Please, don't feel obliged to stay, if that's how you feel.'

***

'And what happened then?' asked Fran as we ate sandwiches in the park.

'He sulked a bit then apologised. I mean, he's hardly in a position to go anywhere, is he?'

'Is that the right way to look at it?' Fran eyed me strangely.

'Meaning?'

'It sounds like you want him to feel trapped.'

There she went again, always looking for the negative. 'What are you saying?'

Her sad cow eyes blinked at me through thick lenses. 'I think we've been here before, haven't we? You want love, but only on your own terms.'

'That's just stupid. You only say that because you can't bear seeing me happy.'

'For God's sake, Will, I'm only trying to help. We went through the same with Kevin, remember? And then Bruce...'

'They were different...'

'Really? It all seems pretty familiar from here.'

She'd gone too far. I couldn't take any more of her attacks so I left her to it. Life had become complicated enough without Fran raking over old coals. Still clutching a sandwich, I headed off towards the boating lake.

And then I saw them. On the bench where we'd sat on our first date, Mikhel now embraced Pavel, their arms and heads entwined, shoulders heaving.

Competing emotions have no hierarchy in claiming our attention: anger takes no precedence over grief, hatred doesn't trump self-pity. Like spiteful children on a merry-go-round, each hits out in turn as it comes around. Grief moistened my eyes so I hardly saw the daffodils that my rage kicked out at. Self-pity forced me to my knees, sobbing, before despair hurled the sandwich into the lake. And then bitterness arrived, telling me to get to my feet, be a man and do something about it.

My mind fixed one end of the line: Mikhel's infidelity, the cause from which consequences must necessarily flow. My subconscious was already planning the other end, the dreadful effects that my conscious mind wasn't yet ready to contemplate. It needed to work up the story, embellish it so my actions could be fully justified. To me, at least. My mind spinning, I headed back towards the office, pushing away pathetic tears and shoving through crowds of lunch-time shoppers. I cursed as I stumbled into someone's guide-dog. Of course, I had been blind myself not to see what was going on under my nose. A discount store taunted me with trashy clothes bought with my house-keeping money. Perhaps it had paid for Pavel's rags, too.

I paused before the Crystal Palace. I'd not been in since the attack - some sort of misplaced loyalty to Mikhel, perhaps. Well, those days were over. Besides, I needed a drink.

Six men in England shirts downed lager in the corner, under the new plain glass windows. Pat had clearly done the repairs to a budget.

'Yes, sir?'

'Large Scotch.'

I glanced around.

'You've cleaned the place up then?'

He nodded. 'Yeah, it's OK I guess. Miss them windows, though. Added a bit of class, them.'

I knocked back the whisky in one. 'Not expecting more trouble, are you?'

He couldn't stop his eyes flicking towards the lads in the corner. 'Nah. Reckon it's all over now.'

'Sure, all over now.' I repeated, slowly.

'Shame, though, had a lot of time for them lads. Hard workers. Still, you do what you've got to do, I guess. Enough is enough.'

'Yeah. Enough is enough. You do what you've got to do.'

'That's right, son. It's tough, but at the end of the day, it's best. For everyone.'

'For everyone,' I echoed.

He misheard me. 'Another one?'

In his big, battered face I recognised an ally, even an accomplice. He'd suffered, too. He'd understand what had to be done.

'Yeah, why not.' My plan was clear now, the whole line drawn from cause to effect. To do what had to be done, and solve a problem I still didn't admit existed. I took out my phone and dialled the short number. As I waited on hold, I continued building my case. Raking over the intimate moments we'd shared, sifting for any signs of infidelity. Minute gestures, the avoidance of eye contact or a joking answer to a serious question, were all bagged and tagged as evidence for the prosecution...

'Hello caller, you're through to the illegal alien hotline.'

***

I came home that evening with the taste of soured whisky in my mouth, a pain tightening across my forehead, and a growing realisation of what I had done. Mikhel was cooking dinner, his back visible through the open kitchen door. I smelt seafood pasta, my favourite.

'Hello?' I called out.

He turned, his face drawn. My heart stopped. Surely he couldn't know already?

'You alright?' I asked tentatively.

He shook his head, his expression fuelling my guilt.

I moved slowly towards him, reflecting that the kitchen might not be the safest place for me if he knew. Wasn't his race renowned for their violent rage?

'What is it?'

He approached me, arms outstretched. I prepared to fend off any attack. His arms went around my neck and his head hit my shoulder.

'Pavel... he gone...' he gasped. 'He have enough. No take more of all this... shit. He want go home himself, before they take him away in no good fucking orange suit.'

'Maybe that's for the best,' I murmured.

Mikhel pulled back and looked at me strangely. 'You think that right thing to do?'

I realised what I'd said and tried to back-track. 'No. Only for Pavel, I mean, in his specific circumstances...'

'Not for me?'

My mouth was dry and my head throbbed. I could do nothing but put my arms around him. As a kid, I could never work out why Judas had to kiss Jesus at Gethsemane. Why not just point him out? But there, as I held Mikhel close to me, I understood. It was because he could not bear to look at him.

'I love you,' was all I could think of to say, and I wondered what they meant.

***

The dawn knock pulled me out of a light doze. Mikhel made no move as I crossed to the window. Six uniformed men waited, one carrying a filthy orange jumpsuit. Did they not even clean them between trips?

'Is it them?' Mikhel's voice sounded hoarse.

I nodded.

'Let them in before they break the door down.' He smiled. 'I'll get my things together.'

I threw myself onto the bed, my arms around his thick neck, feeling for the last time the roughness of his stubble on my cheek. As I kissed him, he whispered, 'I love you, too.'

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# Lost at sea? A tale of two ships on a voyage of discovery

From the Philosophical Engineer blog on the IET's Engineering & Technology Magazine website. Posted 6 August.

If you could go back and ask Aristotle whether he considered himself more a philosopher or a scientist, what might he say? Probably, he would just be baffled by the question since no such distinction existed for him. In those early days of human inquiry, all inquiries into the universe and our place in it were of equal merit, be they physical investigations or metaphysical speculations. It was only as the body of human knowledge grew beyond what could be understood by a single mind that the need arose to fragment knowledge into ever increasing numbers of disciplines and specialisations. Even comparatively recent thinkers such as Descartes and Leibniz are as famous for their philosophy as for their massive contributions to modern engineering practices.

But what a difference a couple of centuries make. When I entered the world of science and engineering, it was made clear to me that the humanities - philosophy, sociology and other "soft" sciences - belonged to a parallel universe which had nothing to do with the real world that I was learning to deal with. "We" are the ones who understand the universe as it really is, and manipulate and exploit it for the good of all mankind. "They" sit idly back and enjoy the fruits of our labour while simultaneously mocking and cajoling us for the collateral damage we create.

Somehow a gulf of mutual misunderstanding and even contempt had opened up between the sciences and humanities. But is that chasm as real (or as permanent) as some would have it?

I have a picture in my mind of two sailing ships. For centuries, becalmed among the treacherous rocks of religious intolerance, they lashed themselves together for safety and could proceed only at a sea-snail's pace. Each new scientific discovery could only safely be published if accompanied by a philosophical correlation with the church's latest thinking. While mathematicians could chart and predict with great precision the movements of bodies, both terrestrial and celestial, their findings had to be presented with reference to supernatural beings who were the ultimate cause of such regular movements. Even to suggest otherwise could be a costly business, as both Galileo (remembered today as a scientist) and Bruno (known as a philosopher) found out for their open support for Copernicus' theories of the solar system.

But with the dawn of Enlightenment, that first great wave of knowledge sharing based on new information technology - the printing press - religion's grip on teaching was loosened. A safe passage opened up for novel ideas, and our good ships' sails filled with the fresh breath of intellectual knowledge. They loosened their ties and surged forward independently although, for sure, it was the Science that took the lead. As it surged forward, its crew applied their new scientific method to sift through their cargo, identifying the items of real value and jettisoning the worthless. Hopeful but unproven practices such as alchemy were pitched overboard to make room for chemistry to flourish and fuel – literally – the industrial revolution. Superstitious astrology was thrown to the sharks and charlatans, leaving space for astronomy to flourish and teach us our true place in the universe.

Now running ahead of the wind in full sail, the crew of the Science looked forward to a bright new future, with barely a glance back at their old companion. Perhaps they assumed that its assorted collection of pastoralists, poets and philosophers was drifting off, set on in its own, irrelevant, course to oblivion. In any case, they had no need for idle speculation when science was proving itself quite capable of explaining the universe, in its entirety, using its own language. For with each new generation of technology - clockwork, steam, electricity - came new analogies to describe the world and our place in it. Planets moved around the sun like the cogs in a pocket-watch, people and animals were just intricate machines, their minds little more than computers. For a couple of centuries a complete understanding of the universe and an answer to all our questions was always just over the horizon, almost within reach. No need for metaphysical contemplation, just ever refined calculation.

But the end of the nineteenth century brought the first waves of the storm that was about to break. Michelson and Morley's demonstration that the speed of light is independent of both observer and observed, followed by Einstein's theoretical interpretation, opened up a whole new universe of uncertainty. Heisenberg and Shrödinger then really put the cat among the pigeons, publicising this fundamental uncertainty in a way that horrified animal lovers and perplexed the public. Suddenly there were not just things that we didn't know yet, but things that we cannot know at all.

Of course, the good ship Sciences sailed on, building models of the universe at fantastically big and fantastically small scales with ever greater precision, generating mathematical formulae that predict the existence of phenomena such as particles with stunning accuracy, most spectacularly with the Higgs Boson. But something had been lost. Perhaps like the first sailors who went over the horizon felt, the crew of the _Sciences_ look back to see their old land of certainties had simply disappeared. Their wonderful mathematics and computer simulations can no longer be explained in ways that make sense to the layman. There are no simple analogies like the old sun-and-planets model to provide intuitive descriptions of the new physical realm of quarks, bosons, spin and strangeness. A void has opened up between what we can _know_ about our world - by which we mean, in scientific terms, what we can model and accurately predict - and what we _understand_.

When physicsts respond to questions about what it all means with the semi-facetious response that their role is just to "shut up and calculate," they open up the door to all manner of speculation. Speculative fiction, new age religions, conspiracy theorits and maverick scientists all rush to fill the vacuum, so that the popular press and the internet are awash with their compelling - or not so compelling - notions.

How to make sense of it all? What discipline can we apply to sift through all this uncertainty and find something that makes some sense, at least to us? Well, of course, dealing with uncertainty lies at the heart of philosophy, and while the good ship _Science_ has been making its wonderful progress over the last centuries, philosophy, too, has been coming along and has one or two things to say.

So, as the crew of the _Science_ sail into uncharted waters, out of sight of land, they may cast around and find that the Humanities is right behind them after all. Perhaps it's had never been so far away, after all.

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# A step closer to the Higgs Boson?

From the Burning Issues blog on my website. Posted 13 December 2011.

Congratulations to the ATLAS and CMS teams, and everyone else concerned with the LHC, for their progress announced today in tracking down the Higgs boson. A magnificent achievement and a timely reminder of what European collaboration is really about.

It is unfortunate, but perhaps unavoidable, that the object of their great work has to be described in the general media as a "God particle," but the irony would not have been lost on Spinoza. Centuries before the discovery of the standard model of particle physics, and of the nuclear atomic model that precedes it, Spinoza intuited that we live in a universe made up of one type of stuff. But in those days he had to use a formulation " _Deus sive Natura_ " (God-as-nature) to avoid the potentially fatal accusation of being an atheist.

Fascinated by science, Spinoza would have delighted in Einstein's revelation that energy and mass are the same thing, and the support it lends to his own explanation of the universe (interestingly, Einstein was a great admirer of Spinoza.) And how astonished Spinoza would have been to see how our scientific instruments have developed - in both size and complexity - since he was grinding lenses for researchers such as Christian Huygens.

Spinoza's generation was one of the last where an individual such as Descartes could be respected for their ideas in both philosophy and the natural sciences. At that time, the foundations for the barriers that were to be erected between the two sides were just being laid, that would later become the mutual disdain that typifies their attitudes to each other today.

Of course, the final irony (which Benedict would have loved) is that never before have the natural sciences been more in need of philosophers. Big science today, typified by the LHC, is mathematics driven. Theories about the behaviour of the tiny particles and their associated forces are derived on paper and in super computers; and then experiments such as LHC are designed to look for ways to detect the _consequences_ of that behaviour, not the particles themselves. Even if they exist, there will be no way of observing them directly. And there is no underlying, quasi-intuitive physical model that can be used to describe their behaviour to the general public; no equivalent of old, familiar sun-and-planets model of the atom for bosons, gluons or fermions. In fact, there is no non-mathematical description at all for many of them. The fantastically talented scientists at CERN and elsewhere can talk endlessly about the particles and their properties, but not actually tell you what they _are_. "We just calculate," goes the mantra. "We leave the interpretation of those calculations to the philosophers."

It would be an enormous challenge for a philosopher to dive into the detail of particle physics science as we know it today, and extract from it the essence that can be explained in terms that make sense to the lay public. But we reckon Benedict would have had a go.

Meanwhile, best wishes to all at LHC for their search in the 124-5 GeV area. You know, we had a feeling they might find it there. Either there, or down the back of the sofa.

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# Goodenough gets his stripes

A light shade of short.

'I'd swear this traffic gets worse every morning,' muttered Sergeant Baldock, gripping the wheel of his stationery patrol car. 'It's taken us fifteen minutes just to reach the High Street.'

'It's always worse on a Friday. Still, if you're in a hurry, you could always put on the blue and twos,' grinned PC Charlie Goodenough, reaching up to the switch.

Bob Baldock slapped his hand down. 'Don't be daft, lad. You know that's only for emergencies. And it's nowhere near tea break time yet.'

They reached the junction and a bus held back to let them in. As he eased into the main road, Baldock turned to wave his thanks to the bus driver, so it was Charlie who first noticed the graffiti.

'Blimey, Sarge, there's another one.'

Baldock's head turned, then his jaw sagged. 'Good God, that's a bit explicit.'

The fresh painting on the wall of the recently built extension to Richman's Royal Regalia factory was, indeed, graphic in its detail.

'It must have been done last night. It wasn't there yesterday.'

With their vehicle stationery again, the two officers had time to contemplate the artwork. It occupied about two square metres of the old brick wall, and had a neatly written caption below it.

'Anatomically it's quite accurately detailed, isn't it?' murmured Charlie.

'I wouldn't know, lad. My memory's not that good. But what's that it says underneath it? Jack Spigot likes what?'

Charlie read out the word.

'Well, I never knew it was spelt like that.'

'Not a word you'd have much call to write down, I'd hope.'

'I don't think I've ever spoken it, either. Mrs Baldock isn't one for that sort of thing. Anyway, changing the subject completely, how are things going with young Emily then?'

Charlie Goodenough let out a deep sigh. 'I dunno. Sometimes it all seems likes its going great, but then, you know, she does all distant on me, won't tell me what she's thinking. We spent the whole evening in the pub together last night and she barely said a word. I really want things to work out between us, but sometimes I get the feeling it's not enough for her, that she wants more of something.'

'That's women, son, better get used to it. Whatever they've got, there'll always be something else they want.'

***

'Here you go, one mango Breezer and a bag of salt'n'vinegar.'

'Tah.'

Charlie set the drinks on the ring-stained table top and eased himself onto the faded velour seat next to Emily. She pulled her handbag out of his way and hugged it on her lap, then jutted out her lower lip to blow away a gaggle of blonde hairs that had strayed into her brown eyes.

'That's all right, isn't it? Nothing else you wanted?'

'Nah, you're all right.'

'Are you OK? You seem miles away.'

'Just watching those two over at the bar.'

Charlie glanced round. The couple in question were sipping at glasses of wine, her hand resting lightly on his arm, showing off a tasteful silver bangle and long, varnished nails. She wore an elegant black dress, he had a smart jacket with a silk scarf.

'Look like they're right up themselves.'

'Yeah, but they're not eating crisps, are they?'

Emily pulled the bag open and prodded inside disconsolately. Her own nails were cut short – nursing duties aren't compatible with long nails – and the contrast between her own, working fingers and the manicured hand resting on the elegant sleeve at the bar was unmissable. She pulled out a crisp and bit it savagely.

'What does that mean?' Charlie was worried. He recognised the danger signs that Emily may be going off on one again.

'It means, my sweet, that they're going on to have supper together. They've only stopped in this hell hole for a swifty, an _apéritif_ as they'd call it, before moving on. They're not going to be stuck here all evening, like us poor mugs.'

'Oh.'

'Yes, oh.'

Charlie looked around the bar. It wasn't _ _that__ bad, was it? Well, he certainly knew of worse places... And then they could go for supper, if they wanted to, but they wouldn't see any change from forty quid and that would be forty quid less to put down as a deposit on a flat when the time came...

'Traffic was bad today.' He decided a change of subject was in order.

'Yeah,' she snorted. 'Tell me about it. Forty minutes to get into the General Hospital this morning.'

'It seems to be getting worse.'

'Yeah, but that's hardly a surprise, is it? I mean, fancy allowing Richman's factory to expand like that, in the middle of town right next to the schools. What did they expect? What were they thinking of?'

Charlie smiled. It didn't take much to get her back to her normal, fiery self. Emily grabbed a handful of crisps and shoved them in her mouth.

'I mean, that council of ours is as good as a chocolate fire guard at the best of times, but old Barry Richman's got most of them right where he wants them - in his pocket. It's disgusting,' she said, through a mouthful of salt'n'vinegar.

'How d'you mean?' Charlie egged her on. He'd much rather have her ranting than moping. Fortunately, her strong socialistic principles were easily provoked.

Emily hesitated. 'Well, I shouldn't really say this...' She looked around in case anyone was listening. The only other punters in the place were the couple at the bar, and they seemed quite engrossed in themselves.

'I mean, those parties he throws. They all go, and then he gets a hold on them all.'

'Not much wrong with parties, is there?'

She let out a sigh at his naivety. 'Not just parties. You know, _ _parties_ _.' She picked up the key to Charlie's battered Nissan from the table and dangled it in front of his face.

Charlie looked blank for a moment, then the penny dropped.

'Oh, you mean _ _parties__? Car keys and all that?'

'Oldest swinger in town,' winked Emily, and took a swig from her Breezer bottle. Every Thursday night. All the great and the good of Newtown turn up, apparently.'

'So, how come you know all this?'

She grinned. 'One of our orthopaedic specialists, Brian Armstrong, is a regular. Kathy, his secretary, says he absolutely refuses to do any evening work on a Thursday. Apparently Mrs Armstrong comes along to pick him up sometimes, all dressed up to the nines, but when she asks they always say they're not going out anywhere special.'

'How the other half live, eh?'

'Yeah. And Kathy says he always gets odd calls during Thursday from a whole bunch of strange people. Ernie Renfrew, the council boss. Jack Spigot, the ironmonger. Oh, and your Chief Constable, of course.'

'The Chief? You reckons he goes?'

Emily pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows.

'Cor.' Charlie reflected on this news. 'Strewth. Fancy another drink?'

Emily looked wistfully at the empty bottle. The couple at the bar were heading off, she picking up her handbag and kissing him lightly on the cheek, he holding open the door and putting a protective arm around her waist.

'Are we always going to find ourselves sitting in the pub all night?'

She'd gone again.

'No, of course not. When we've got a place of our own...'

'When? Don't you mean "if"? Let's face it, Charlie. With your constable's salary, and my nurse's pittance, we're not going to get a place of our own any time soon.'

'We could rent somewhere.'

'Yeah, pour money down the drain just to stay in some pokey little bedsit? No thanks. I'd rather stay in the nurses' home.'

'I'll not be a PC forever. When I get my promotion...'

'What, in ten years' time? That's how long it too my dad to get his sergeant's stripes. I'm sorry, Charlie, but I really don't think I can wait...'

'No, Emily, it won't take that long. I promise! I can do it quicker than that. Please, just give me a year...'

Emily wasn't looking at him. She folded up the empty crisp packet into a tiny strip, then tied a knot in it. He ploughed on.

''... all right, then. Three months.'

Now she looked up, but her big brown eyes were brimming with tears. She placed a hand on his cheek.

'All right then, Charlie Goodenough. If you can get your stripes in three months, then I'll be yours forever.'

'You mean that? A promise?'

Emily laughed. 'Yeah, it's a promise.' She rose to go. 'Now, I'm pretty shagged out today, so I think I'll head back to the home. I'll see you around.'

***

'So, where are we off to, Sarge?'

Another Friday morning; another gridlock along the High Street.

'Suspected break-in over near the golf course.'

'One of those big posh places with the swimming pools and all that?'

Bob Baldock nodded. 'That's it. Willy Richman's place, actually, and he's a personal friend of the Chief, so it wants delicate handling.'

Charlie Goodenough let out a low whistle. 'He must have quite a place out there, judging by how his factory keeps expanding. I bet they must have got away with a fortune's worth of stuff.'

'Actually, no. Apparently nothing was taken. Just that Richman noticed signs of the intrusion when he went round the back of the house for something.'

Charlie frowned. 'Nothing taken? Then wouldn't the community officer normally handle something like that?'

'Like I said, a friend of the CC. So mind you're on your best behaviour.' They were just reaching the roundabout by the General Hospital, the last one before the relatively open road out of Newtown.

'Don't worry, I'll not burp or fart... Oh my God, they've been at it again! Just look at that.'

Charlie pointed towards the fresh artwork on the hospital wall.

'Blimey, what are they up to? How many of them are there?'

'Well, I see five legs, so I guess there's at least three of them.'

'What does it say? "Brian Armstrong is a loyalist troilist." What the hell does that mean? And who is Brian Armstrong?'

'He's a surgeon at the hospital. Emily says he came over from Northern Ireland a year or so back. I guess that explains the "loyalist" bit.'

'And I guess the picture is the clue to "troilist". Well, I have to give it to this graffiti artist, he's improving my vocabulary.'

As they drove slowly past the painting, taking it in, a man in overalls came out of the gate with a bucket and brush in hand.

'Looks like the hospital managers don't want others to benefit from the education,' laughed Charlie.'

'Yeah, Brian Armstrong must have spotted it as he came in.' They cleared the last junction and Baldock accelerated away up the dual carriageway. 'So anyway, things any better with Emily?'

Charlie sighed and scratched his head. 'I don't know if we can work things out. I just need to... Sarge, how long were you a PC before you got promoted?'

'Eleven years, Charlie.' He heard the PC's low moaned and added quickly, 'but don't worry, you're a bright lad and the force needs people like you. You might make it in six, maybe even five years.'

Charlie sighed even deeper. 'Is there no way to get promoted more quickly?'

'Ah, a boy in a hurry! Well, it's possible, of course, if you really catch the inspector's eye. But that's not a route I'd recommend. Try too hard, and you might catch her eye for the wrong reason, and then you're snookered.'

'What would be the right reason?'

Sgt Baldock frowned as he contemplated this philosophical poser. 'Well, I suppose like anyone in power, if you take away some pain for her, she might be grateful.'

Goodenough seized the straw. 'And what pain does she have at the moment?'

The sergeant sucked in his teeth. 'Well, I know she's pretty aerated about the traffic situation, it's causing a lot of grief, one way or another. And wasting a lot of officers' time that she'd rather have doing something constructive.'

Charlie looked glumly at the traffic queuing on the other carriageway. 'I don't suppose there's anything much I can do about that.'

'No, I reckon not. Unless you've got a few million to spare to build a new ring road.'

The constable sighed. 'Not much hope, then.'

'Then there's always this graffiti business. She says she's getting a lot of grief from the Chief over that. Seems that the individuals featured in the drawings all happen to be personal chums of his. He's pushing her hard for a result on that. Perhaps a bright lad like you could sniff something out there.'

'Have we got anything to go on?'

'Not so much. They're all over town, no particular pattern we can see. Always at night, of course, so no witnesses. There is plenty of CCTV footage, but all you see is a kid in a hoodie. We've talked to all the usual suspects on the estate, but nothing doing there. They all seem to have rock solid alibis for their Thursday nights – there's a disco at the community centre, or something.'

'Is it always Thursday?'

'Seems like it.'

'It's really weird, though. Why do they pick on these people? Why should a kid from the estate even know about them, let alone care?'

'When you've been in this job a few more years, lad, you'll begin to understand that there's no point looking for rational explanation for why people do what they do.'

***

'You can see, here, the rhododendron's been trampled. Footprints in the mud, and look, there's mud and scuff marks all the way up the wall to the window.'

Charlie nodded and noted these facts in his book.

'Was the window forced, sir?' asked Sgt Baldock.

Willy Richman coughed. 'Er, no. It was open, actually. I mean, a single window fifteen feet up on a blank wall, no drainpipe or anything, we never thought... How could anyone get up there without a ladder?'

'How indeed, sir?'

They examined the ground by the wall – there were no indentations to suggest any recent use of a ladder.

'And you heard nothing?'

y Richman coughed again. 'Well, no. We were actually having a small party. We do most Thursday nights. I'm afraid we wouldn't have heard a thing.'

'No one else in the house? Apart from you and Mrs Richmond and the party guests?'

'My son, Lucien. But he was asleep at the time, says he heard nothing at all.'

'And you say they took nothing?'

'That's the strangest part. All that trouble to get in, and they took nothing at all.'

'Curious. And the footprints suggest they came in and out of that gate? Was it locked?'

'Yes, we hardly ever use it ourselves. But it's only a single bolt – I'm sure a fit young man could scramble up and reach over to it.'

'Indeed. Well, I think we've seen all we need to here. Perhaps we could just pop inside to complete the paperwork? We'll need a signed statement from you.'

Richman led the way through the rhododendrons, past the azaleas and roses, and around to the front porch. It was a sizeable house. Just as they reached it, the front door opened, framing a woman with a teenage boy grasping a rucksack. She was smoothing his hair. At the sight of the policeman the boy scowled, slung the sack over his back and thrust his hands into his pockets.

***

'Do we really have to spend our whole Thursday evening in this place, again?' sighed Emily, picking at the label of her Breezer bottle. 'Can't we do something different for a change? Or is this it, for the rest of our lives?'

_Here we go again_ , thought Charlie. 'Of course it's not. I told you, I'll get my promotion in three months, and then we'll be sorted.'

'Oh, Charlie, I wish I could believe you. But it's not that simple. The thing is, I really like you, but I just don't know if this is going anywhere.'

'I can do it, just trust me. Bob Baldock says it's possible.'

'How?'

Charlie scratched his ear. 'Well, I've just got to do something clever to impress the Inspector. Like, solve the mystery of the graffiti artist. Or sort out the traffic problem.'

Emily let out a humourless laugh. 'Well, the traffic's easy to sort. Get Willy Richman to put his workforce on flexitime, stagger their hours so they can avoid the school rush.'

'Well, I might try that,' said Charlie brightly. I went round to his place because of a break-in last week, so I could wangle a return visit and maybe bring the subject up, subtle like.'

'Good luck with it. You wouldn't be first person to ask. But he won't have it - he says it makes for inefficient working or something, and he'd lose control. Of course, what he really means is he'd have to stay there longer himself, and there's too many things he'd rather be doing.'

'Oh,' said Charlie, a little deflated. But he soon brightened. 'Then I guess it'll have to be graffiti boy.'

'You mean Newtown's very own Banksy? Well, I guess you've at least a ghost of a chance with that one. How do propose to catch him?'

'Er... I could try surveillance.' Charlie's resolution to catch the vandal hadn't actually, yet, progressed as far as thinking how he might do so.

'Great idea! You could just hang about the streets every Thursday night, hoping to be near the right bit of wall to catch him. Better than sitting in this place, I guess.'

'Well, I don't know about that,' mumbled Charlie.

'Mind you, leave it a few more weeks and it will be really easy. I mean, the rate he's going, there soon won't be that many walls left in Newtown that he hasn't already decorated.'

Charlie didn't mind her sarcasm. It was better than moping.

'But then, actually, it's probably better to use a bit of this.' He tapped his forehead with a forefinger. 'I mean, think about it, he must have a profile. I'll put in a bit of overtime on the old computer, go through the records of all the toe-rags on the estate, and there's bound to be one of them to match the profile.'

He hoped he sounded more confident of his plan than he actually felt.

'I reckon you'll be lucky to find him there,' said Emily.

'Why not? We've got data on all of them. ASBOs at least, if not actual criminal records. There must be something there to go on.'

'I doubt if your man has got a record. I reckon he spends too much time studying.'

The copper blinked. Had he missed something?

'Come on, Charlie, what do we know about this bloke? Let's start with the drawings. What can do the last couple of drawings say about whoever did them?'

PC Goodenough furrowed his brow and thought hard. He hadn't expected to start his criminal profiling career like this.

'Come on Charlie, the most obvious thing is they're after Bacon.'

PC Goodenough blinked. How he loved this girl. Sure, she had her mithering moments and dark moods – don't all females? – but she could bounce back in an instant, sharp as scalpel, as stunning as a taser. But this time he had her. He couldn't decide if she was talking about their eating habits, or referring in some oblique way to the sexual nature of the pictures.

'It's quite distinctive,' she continued, 'He's perfectly replicated Bacon's often brutal depiction of the human form. On the other hand, some of the others were straight from Picasso, while a couple are positively Daliesque.'

Light began to dawn in the brain of Charlie Goodenough. He remembered her "A*" A-level in art.

'So, what does that tell us, Inspector Morse?'

'It tells us...' Charlie thought quickly. 'That our man knows something about art?'

'Exactly. So that will narrow down your search, won't it? And then there's the writing. What did you notice about that?'

'Apart from not having heard of half the words?'

'Exactly. And they were spelt right, too. So you think you can track down one of your likely lads on the estate who are familiar with twentieth century art and English literature?'

Charlie furrowed his brow. A vague memory had suddenly surfaced and given birth to an idea that was beginning to take shape.

'Plus, of course,' Emily added. 'The targets of these great works of art are all from the great and good of Newtown society. What boy from the estate would have a grudge against them?'

The light in Charlie's head burned brightly now, his brain clicking and whirring into life. A smile grew across his face as he grabbed Emily's hand.

'Come on, let's go.'

'Where?'

'To get me my promotion.'

***

'Charlie, is this your idea of a romantic evening?'

'Be quiet and kiss me. Otherwise it looks suspicious.'

'You don't think having snogging in a knackered old Nissan on a posh private estate is a bit suspicious anyway?'

It wasn't the most comfortable position for a moonlight tryst, Charlie had to admit, with his ribs jammed up against the steering wheel and the gear knob threatening serious damage if he got too carried away. But their clinch allowed him to keep an eye on the back of the house, while Emily could see the front. Then he saw a movement in the upstairs window.

'Ssh, something's happening.'

'Well, I can see that. Looks like there's a right old party going on in there. I mean, look at all those cars. Must be a million quids' worth sitting in the drive. Whose place is it, anyway?'

'I'm not looking at the party. There's something happening at the back window.'

'Someone's breaking in? Shouldn't you call the station?'

'No, not breaking in. He's breaking out, more like. Ah, and what's that he's dropping down?'

Emily wriggled out from his embrace and looked around.

'It's a rope. Someone's climbing down.'

'He's coming out the gate. Quick, kiss me.'

'You smooth talking old bastard.'

'He's getting on a bike. Come on, let's go.'

'Go?'

'We've got to follow him. Who knows who's in line for the artistic treatment tonight?'

***

Lucien Richman's heart was pounding. This was the big one. If he was caught tonight, he could expect no mercy from the feds. He had his preliminary sketches in his pocket, along with a photograph torn from the local paper, and a late drawing by Dali. But he probably wouldn't need them, he'd spent all evening practising this particular work. He pedalled at top speed into town, his rucksack slung over his shoulder, heading straight towards the High Street. With his hood up, and the wind in his ears, he had no inkling of the old silver car following at a discreet distance. Head down, he tore past the cop shop and turned off into the next side road. He'd chosen the site carefully – it was a dead end that he knew they used as an overflow car-park during the day. His work would get the audience it deserved.

He leapt off his bike and leant it against the wall. Dumping his bag on the floor, he pulled the paint cans and sketches from it. He unfolded a large sheet of paper and smoothed it out against the wall. Engrossed in his work, he didn't notice the quiet footsteps padding up behind him.

'Hello, Lucien. I think we need a little chat, don't you?' said PC Charlie Goodenough.

***

Willy Richman had just waved off the last BMW from his drive, containing a very contented looking Mr and Mrs Armstrong, and was about to lock up when a tatty old Nissan drew in through the gates. With an irritated tut he walked up to the driver's window to tell them they had the wrong address, when the door opened and a vaguely familiar figure alighted.

'Good evening, sir,' said Charlie. He'd left Lucien sitting in the car with Emily. For now. 'Could I have a word?'

Richman frowned, then the penny dropped. 'Oh, hello. You're that policeman – I didn't recognise you out of uniform. Are you plain clothes now?'

'No, Sir. Just off duty.'

'Off duty? Then what do you want? Can't it wait? It's late.'

'Not really, sir. I think we should do it now.' As Richman hesitated, Charlie added, 'we have your son in the car.'

***

It was well past midnight as Charlie drove a yawning Emily back to her home. At least there was no traffic in the High Street then. Emily rested her head on his shoulder.

'So, how did it go?'

Charlie thought a moment. 'It was all a bit intense, really. The poor lad completely lost it at one stage. The thought of what his parents had been up to must have really screwed him up. Especially when he's been in the house.'

'What on earth made them think he wouldn't find out?'

'Seems they hadn't realised he's not a kid any more. They just pictured him fast asleep at ten o'clock, like he used to be. It's a big house and his room's at the other end of it, so he couldn't hear them. He just happened to come down one night to get some water, and there it all was, going on under his nose.'

'Poor kid. Must have been a shock.'

'Yeah, and it's been eating into him. He just can't believe his mother could behave like that.'

'So he blamed all the others instead?'

'That's right. And plastering their images all over town seemed like a good way to get revenge.'

'I still don't know how you knew it was him.'

'Lucky guess. When I saw him last week, I thought there was something funny about the way he hid his hands in his pockets. Then there was the thing about someone coming and through the window – it was clearly an inside job, and by the state of the flower bed it didn't just happen the once.'

She stroked his arm. 'You clever copper.'

'Let's hope the inspector thinks so.'

'Will she throw the book at him, do you think?'

'Perhaps. Or maybe there's more than one way to skin this particular cat.'

***

The patrol car pulled smoothly into the High Street and accelerated gently past the factory gates. Sgt Baldock shook his head in wonder.

'I just can't believe how this traffic's improved these last couple of months.'

'Yes, it's since they started flexitime at the factory.'

'I wonder what could have made old Richman change his mind like that. Apparently he was dead against the idea, then suddenly he changed his mind.'

'Yeah, weird wasn't it,' grinned Charlie.

'What's really odd, is how it happened about the same time the graffiti artist stopped. We never got to the bottom of that one, either. I reckon the angels were on our side, that week.'

'You're probably right, Sergeant Baldock. And they granted us two miracles.'

'No, son. As my mum always says, things come in threes. And there were three miracles, weren't there?'

'What was the third?'

'You getting promoted, Sergeant Goodenough. I don't think I'll ever work that one out if I live to be a hundred.'

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# Einstein and Spinoza

From the Burning Issues blog on my website. Posted 20 March.

Huge thanks today to the Polonsky foundation for helping the Einstein Archives Online project at Hebrew University make another 2500 items of Einstein's writings available to all (see http://alberteinstein.info/). We don't need to remind anyone of the transforming impact that the genius Einstein made on our world. But it is less well known that he described himself as a "follower of Spinoza." He even wrote a poem in Spinoza's honour!

Included in the papers are Einstein's ideas for establishing a peaceful homeland for his Jewish people, working in co-operation with the Palestinian Arabs, rather than against them. An approach that was sure to have been approved of by Spinoza, with whom he had a lot in common.

Both men were double-exiles. Before he was born, Spinoza's family fled the religious persecutions in Iberian peninsula to settle in Holland, then Spinoza himself was rejected by his own Jewish community and forced to leave Amsterdam. Einstein fled a Europe gripped by the growing Nazi threat, and dreamt of his people returning to their traditional homeland. But not at any price: like Spinoza, he lived in time of war and saw first hand the cruelties that religious and political extremism can lead men to commit. Both men yearned for peaceful co-existence based on rational understanding of each other and the world we live in. Spinoza's dream of a quiet and peaceful democracy in which every man is free to think, and say what he thinks, was scorned at the time as naïve and unacceptable to the status quo. Yet, in many parts of the world, we have managed to create just such safe place for our thinkers.

And Einstein, as the papers put online today show, had his own dream. The man who was actually mooted as a possible first president for Israel imagined the two Semitic peoples setting aside politics and nationalism to elect a council of rational thinkers - doctors, lawyers, workers and clergymen - who would work together to resolve their differences and agree a plan for peaceful co-existence based on their common interests. His ideas, like Spinoza's, were dismissed as naïve and unacceptable to the status quo.

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# Beyond the Olympics – a golden future for society?

From the Philosophical Engineer blog on the IET's Engineering & Technology Magazine website. Posted 21 August.

Basking in the golden afterglow of Olympic job well done, Great Britons are now grappling out how best to carry that great Olympian spirit forward. Debate rages about whether funds should be spread widely, to encourage as much sports participation as possible in the general public, or focused on elite young athletes to ensure future excellence and gold medals. While the debate sometimes splits along drearily familiar political lines, there seems to be a genuine consensus that something should be done to encourage us all to emulate the examples set by medal-winning athletes and adopt similar attitudes of dedication, positive mindedness, team spirit and healthy lifestyle. In other words, to achieve a permanent change in our lifestyles.

But planning wholesale changes in society – however well intentioned – can sail perilously close to an activity that possibly represents the most contentious use of the word engineering: social engineering. That's a phrase guaranteed to light the blue touch paper for those people who regularly express concern about the sanity of political correctness, whose detractors will be quick to point out "failed experiments" (which may, according to taste, include Nazism, the Soviet Union, Cuba, Catalan anarchists, or tower block estates) that prove that social engineering can never produce favourable outcomes.

Arguably, all politics are about social engineering. Every health, education, energy or transport policy changes the way society behaves by altering the distribution of wealth and power among its internal groups. But few of us – least of all, perhaps, engineers – would consider government policy making as a valid use of the word "engineering". Engineering involves hard measurements and systems with well understood, predictable behaviours. Society, on the other hand, is made up of those autonomous beings known as people, all imbued with that pesky little attribute, "free will". Whatever techniques are employed to guide, shepherd and coerce the great mass of humankind, they're a long way from engineering as we know it.

But is human behaviour really so unpredictable? Don't stage magicians, charismatic leaders, marketers and advertisers, crowd control police, political propagandists and many others show that we can, at times, be quite predictable, even controllable? And how can we be so sure our wills are really free? This is the archetypal philosophical question, pored over and debated for millennia. On the one hand, science has given us a more and more determinate picture of a universe built upon unchanging laws, from which we have constructed a grand causal chain of events that now reaches back some 14 billion years to the moments after the big bang. How, then, can it be that we can impose our own desires, free willy-nilly as it were, upon this strict sequence of cause and effect?

In previous centuries, thinkers might appeal to divine intervention as a means to allow natural processes to be overruled by animate will. More recently, uncertainty at the quantum level has been proposed to provide the wriggle room for human will to impose itself and break some links in the otherwise fully determined casual chain of events.

But there have also been other philosophers, from the Stoics to Spinoza, who have denied the very notion of free will. They have no problems accepting that the universe is fully determinate, and "free will" is simply an illusion caused by our lack of understanding of what's really going on in our minds. For them, our thoughts and behaviour are not an unfathomable mystery linked to some unique condition of being human, but simply an area of scientific knowledge that we've not yet found a way to investigate in any depth. And certainly, until recently, we've had neither the tools nor the language required to even begin the work needed to understand human behaviour or to construct models of the mind like the ones we've built up for the body over last couple of hundred years.

But things are changing now, and fast. We are engineering the means, such as fMRI scanners, to measure and monitor brain activity in situ. We are developing an understanding of the factors that influence thought and behaviour, including our genetic make-up, the environment (our histories as well as immediate environment) and how the delicate chemical balances in the brain can be affected by drugs, hunger, stress and tiredness. And computer science gives us a whole new paradigm for modelling complex systems.

Is it possible that this understanding will one day allow us, truly, to model human behaviour in the way we can today model, for example, the workings of heart and limbs? If so, that understanding must bring with it the ability to accurately predict behaviour in a given circumstance, and from there it's a short step to influencing the circumstances in order to bring about a desired behaviour.

Then we might know exactly how to preserve and extend the Olympic spirit – or any other civic virtues that we think will make for a happier, more balanced society. And if we can do that, surely then social engineering will have joined the pantheon of "true" engineering disciplines?

Not in my lifetime, probably, but then who knows? Do you think that will happen? And perhaps, more importantly, would you want it to?

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# Presidential election 2012

From the Burning Issues blog on my website. Posted 24 April.

In la belle France votes elections are managed - and reported - at commune level. Our cave is set in a tiny, tranquil hamlet which boasts a grand total of 133 registered voters, of whom 111 voted on Sunday. They are mostly farmers, mostly growing the grapes that make up the table wine produced in the local co-operative. Paradoxically, the co-operative ideal is in no way reflected in their voting preferences. Forty-one people voted for the right-wing Sarko, and a further twenty-seven for the righter-wing Madame Le Pen. It's interesting to compare the figures with the last time out: in 2007 Sarko's total of votes was... forty-one. Could these be exactly the same people who voted for him again on Sunday? Have the intervening five years of gaffes and indiscretions really not changed anyone's opinion of him?

Meanwhile, Marie Le Pen's result represents an increase of five on her father's figure of twenty-two in 2007, while the socialists' François Hollande's eleven (well, at least it's double figures) is down eight from the total commanded by his ex-wife Ségolène Royal five years ago. One is forced to wonder what lies behind such a swing from centre-left to hard right, especially after five years of a right-wing president. The parties, and even the families, are the same, so what's changed? Is it really possible that a switch to the distaff side can cause a small posse of female floating voters to flip-flop left to right?

A more pronounced swing boosts the tally of Jean-Luc Mélanchon, leader of the "Front de Gauche," to nineteen votes, which is nineteen more than his party gathered in 2007 under its old banner of Parti Communiste. What a difference a name change makes. At the foot of the table, José Bové of the Confédération Paysanne received two endorsements from the local peasants, while Frédéric Nihous of the hunting, shooting and fishing party get the support of two local hunters, shooters and fishers. The Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste got one vote, but the environmentalist Eva Joly didn't. Perhaps farmers struggling to make their small scale operations pay in the face of fierce global competition feel they're already doing their bit for the environment. Perhaps.

So, as we stroll around the hamlet today, Spinny and I will look at my neighbours with new eyes. We reckon we know at least one of the two hunters, and have suspicions about a few likely Sarko and Le Pen supporters. But what we would really love to know is, where among the vineyards and olive groves lurks that lone anti-capitalist?

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# Family business

Short story.

The arresting officer flipped open the spy-hole cover with a flourish.

'There you are, Ma'am, safely banged up. The little shit.'

Superintendent Sharon Moir took off her glasses and put her eye to the opening. A pathetic figure sat rocking on the hard edge of the bench, hands between knees. She thought she heard him muttering. A prayer? A whimper? He looked up and she saw the bruises darkening around puffy eyes and blood congealing on his lip.

She stiffened. 'He looks hurt, Sergeant.'

'Doc's seen him. Says he's fine, Ma'am.'

'What happened?'

'He banged his head on a door as we got him away. A couple of times, actually.'

She drew back her head from the hole to inspect the officer's face. His dark eyes held hers, steady, unrepentant..

'I don't like that sort of thing, Sergeant. Everyone in our custody is entitled to safe passage. Whatever they're charged with.'

'With respect, Ma'am, I think the bastard got off a damned sight lighter than if we'd left him to that mob.'

She sighed and replaced her glasses. His insubordination would have to be dealt with, but that could wait. Right now there was the paperwork to plough through. And she still harboured a faint hope of getting away in time for Sam's concert.

'Has he admitted anything?'

'Not yet, Ma'am. We've had a word and put in the fear of God. Now just letting him reflect a while...'

She nodded and glanced at her watch, almost envious. Time to reflect would be a luxury. Three hours ago she'd been set to leave in good time for the show, maybe even get home and tidy up. That was before the alarm went up: officers in danger.

It had started as a routine matter. Social services identified a boy in danger, obtained a court order, requested police back-up to get him out. But somewhere along the line there'd been a leak and word seeped out. It lapped around the tatty houses and grey tower blocks on the estate, and soon a crowd washed up outside the mean end of terrace house with the broken gate.

The careworkers had managed to whisk the boy away before the mob thickened and blocked the exit route for the two officers, who'd stayed behind to caution the father. Whispers turned to shouts, voices and fists were raised, and the first brick came through the window as the policemen called for assistance. The radio operator heard the crash and raised the alarm. As the most senior officer present, Superintendent Moir rushed to the scene, pausing only to stuff the concert ticket, hopefully, into her bag.

The street was taped off but she estimated the crowd beyond was already a couple of hundred strong. They milled around with makeshift banners, hurling abuse at the shattered house and the thin line of coppers that stood between them and it. Inside, the officers were happy to obey her instructions to stay well out of sight. The press were already there, and she groaned to see the local TV crew roll up. As if the double challenge of getting her men away safely and avoiding serious public disorder wasn't enough, she now had to do it under the scrutiny of the news cameras. But even as she cursed quietly under her breath, a seed of an idea was already germinating in her mind, preparing to blossom into the sort of insightful and brilliant response that had marked her rapid career progression to superintendent.

She knew this place from her days as a rookie WPC, patrolling the streets, picking up and bringing back home the lost, the needy, the culpable and the victims. Each house had a rear garden backing onto an identical one behind it. If her men could get over the fence they'd easily slip through to a waiting car in the parallel street. She just needed to distract the crowd to give them a clear run.

The solution crystallised. If there's one thing a self-righteous mob enjoys more than a good lynching, it's getting their faces on the telly. True, it would mean flouting the force's strict policy of no interviews without a PR team member present, for which she'd no doubt be held to account later. She shrugged. More paperwork.

Her offer was a delightful surprise to a news team more used to coppers who would sooner face a vicious murderer unarmed than talk in public without their PR minder present. While they set up their gear, Superintendent Moir acted out her own little drama, talking loudly about camera angles and sound levels and inspecting her own appearance in her mirror. Her antics grabbed the crowd's attention. In ones and twos, then dozens, they drifted away from the house to gather around her, jostling to get into shot. A young WPC with a radio clamped to her ear positioned herself just behind the young reporter posing the questions. Superintendent Moir answered thoughtfully, carefully and even, perhaps, a little long-windedly. All the while she kept an eye on the WPC. Behind her, the crowd generously proffered their own opinions, mostly related to the restitution of the death penalty and other physical punishments.

'...but can I please press you, Superintendent Moir, to confirm that the man in the house behind you is the boy's father?'

As Superintendent Moir considered the question, she saw the WPC wink and give the thumbs up.

She raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. 'What man? The house behind me is empty. But I can confirm that there is a man currently helping us with our inquiries into this matter at the station. Now, if you would please excuse me...'

She slid the cover back over the spy-hole thoughtfully. 'Where's the boy?'

Before the sergeant could reply, a soft voice answered from behind.

'Denny's OK, Superintendent Moir. We've got him at a safe house. He's well.'

She swung round to the stocky figure who'd arrived unnoticed behind her. The chubby face with greying hair seemed familiar. She was from the social. Called Maggie, or something like that.

'Does he... know what's happening?'

The woman was clutching a document folder, held tightly shut with an elastic strap. Guarding its secrets.

'Not really. He's very confused. As you'd expect.'

Sharon Moir pictured the boy, snatched from his family without warning, alone, bewildered. She tried hard not to let the face of the boy be that of Sam's. 'How old is he?'

'Nine.'

She swallowed. Sam was nine. 'The mother...?'

'We think she's with friends. She doesn't cope too well. Dependency issues.'

Superintendent Moir bit back an urge to judge. Cause and effect were at play, and who knows which caused what? 'Are there others involved?'

'Not as far as we know. We think he kept it in the family. A typical pattern.'

She winced. 'Family business.' Even with all Rob's drinking and womanising, she couldn't picture her own ex doing anything like this. In fact, she just couldn't imagine how anyone could act that way. It was simply beyond comprehension.

She realised the social worker was watching her. Straightening herself up and smoothing her skirt, she nodded curtly and headed off towards her office, vaguely aware of the scurrying feet behind her.

'Superintendent? Do you have a moment?'

She stopped and glanced at her watch. There was still a chance she could get to the show. She so owed it to Sam, especially after the last time. And the time before.

'OK. Give me five minutes. I'll be in my office.'

The lap-top was open on her desk, its screen-saver the photo taken a couple of years ago, just after Rob had cleared out for good, when she was hanging on to keep everything together, planning a new future for just the two of them. Trying to keep the rest of the world out of the little world she was building for them both...

Shit! Sam would see the interview.

If she wasn't there in time, her mum would take him back to her place and she'd put the local news on as she always did. Sam had seen her on the telly once before. He'd questioned her excitedly about it for days. And if it had been hard for her to explain to him what a racially motivated hate crime was about, what the hell was she going to tell him about this case?

No, she had to get him herself. She'd do the paperwork at home, with Sam safely tucked up in bed. Shoving the lap-top and a handful of papers into its case, she skirted round her desk and snatched open the door. A stocky figure stood outside, one hand raised to knock, the other still clutching the folder as if it were a child.

'Is it OK for you, now?'

Sharon Moir took off her glasses and passed a weary hand over her face. Superintendent Moir replaced them, stiffened and invited the little woman in. She returned to her desk with professional briskness.

'How can I help?'

The social worker pulled away the folder's elastic strap and fished out a handful of papers.

'I thought you ought to see this.'

'Is it important? Couldn't it wait?'

'Please, Superintendent.'

The policewoman took the crisp sheets. They were obviously freshly printed, and were missing any indication of the witness's identity, date and time. If she thought about that, it was only to assume the statement had been printed off in haste. She began to read. Towards the end of the first page she was aware of her hands gripping the paper too hard. She forced them to relax, to hide her emotion, to be professional. By the third page, they were shaking and she'd given up any attempt to hide it. After the fifth page she put the papers down, stood and turned her back to the visitor to look out through the slatted window blind over the bleak, concrete car park.

'Make's pretty tough reading, doesn't it?'

She nodded, not trusting her voice. To avoid imagining the little boy with Sam's face, she forced herself to picture the pathetic, battered figure in the cells below. Now she was glad she hadn't given the sergeant a proper bollocking. She wasn't even sure she wouldn't have done something worse herself.

The social worker was still speaking. 'It went on for years. The mother must have known about it, but...'

Anger flared again in Sharon Moir's mind. She fought against its unreasonableness – how could you compare the crime of not being there with all that she had just read? The sound of the church clock came through the window. Six o'clock. Somewhere out there Sam was with his classmates, preparing for the show. She wasn't going to make it. Again.

'But you've got the boy safe now? You said, he's OK, right?'

'Denny's safe, yes. For now.'

'For now?'

There was a sigh behind her. 'Maybe that's the worse part. They seem OK at the time because they just don't understand what's going on. But that's only the start of their journey. Later on, when it really hits them, the rest of the world has moved on and no one's left around to help them through it. Then they have to find their own path, the only way they know how...'

The policewoman turned back and slumped into her chair, no longer bothering to hide her tears. 'That poor kid... oh my God, that poor kid. What the hell will become of him? What sort of life can he have after this?'

The social worker sat quietly for a moment, then reached out a hand to take the papers back. She still spoke in her gentle way.

'I'm afraid I know the answer to that. This statement was made twenty years ago. By the man now locked up in your cell downstairs.'

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# Olympic legacy?

From the Burning Issues blog on my website. Posted 14 August.

So, they're over. The frantic running, jumping and throwing has ceased for another four years, and a warm glow seems to have settled over all concerned. It seems, if the news reports are to be believed, that the Olympics have been a huge success.

What, we're sure everyone will be wondering, would Spinoza have made of it all? Certainly, there's no evidence that he was a big sports fan. All the biographical evidence we have suggests that he was much happier with his books and writing than with physical exertions. But he did enjoy playing games, purely as a sociable activity, and also he's reported to have taken pleasure from spectating fights between various insects he found in his room (well, they didn't have telly in those days, did they?)

But how much of the success of the Olympics can be put down to the fact they only occur every four years? It's hard to imagine so much energy begin put into an annual event. Which leads Spinny and me to wonder - would other big events benefit from ony happening less often? How about, for instance, if four big religious festivals - say, Christmas, Ramadan, Diwali and Hanuukah for example - were to take it in turns so that we only had one of them each year? Then we could all join in with each one, making it a truly inclusive event and bringing all if us together in world-wide harmony.

It would be great for business, as international commerce would not suffer the current, seemingly endless series of holidays where one country is on vacation after another. And many of us might just learn again to love (or at least tolerate) all those songs by Slade, George Michael and Cliff Richard, if we only hear them every four years.

But won't religious types get upset? They shouldn't. Because they always moan about the "commercialisation" of their festivals, they should welcome their "decommercialisation" for three out of four years. With the rest of use celebrating elsewhere, they will be free to consecrate their own religious events in their own way, without being drowned out by a wave of parties and present giving.

Just a thought.

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# A century of symbols

From the Philosophical Engineer blog on the IET's Engineering & Technology Magazine website. Posted 4 September.

It's logical, isn't it?

Perhaps, like me, you sometimes find yourself uttering these words, especially during some heated debate to express just how obvious and self-evident our viewpoint is. To us, at least.

Logic occupies a special place in our lives, and not just when we argue. The core of rational thinking it provides the bricks and mortar from which the whole edifice of human understanding is built. More basic even than the natural number system, logic runs like a common thread linking together disciplines as diverse as philosophy, mathematics, engineering and IT.

The discipline of formal logic was established by Aristotle, but its history over the last hundred years provides a unique illustration of how potent ideas grow and spread from one subject area to another. And how ideas that initially appeared to be purely abstract notions can be developed into useful theories about the world, and then implemented in physical products that change the way we all live.

Around the beginning of the twentieth century many traditional notions about the world were crumbling. Darwin had blown away the old idea that we humans were given a special place to live in a clockwork universe, designed, built and wound up by a God, while Einstein blasted into (sub-)atoms our deepest certainties about time and space. Faced with such disruption to the old certainties, what more natural human reaction than to go back to basics and seek a way to reconstruct our knowledge on more solid footing? And what more solid ground than reason and logic?

And so the logicians set to. In mathematics, David Hilbert laid down a challenge to the whole community in the form of twenty-three unsolved problems whose solutions would provide a firm, logical foundation for their discipline. Meanwhile Bertrand Russell built upon Gottlob Frege's work in analytic philosophy, and his own _Principles of Mathematics_ proposed to reconstruct the whole edifice of mathematics on top of this foundation. But these efforts relied on set theory, and even as he wrote, Russell spotted a tiny flaw in this construction that would, in time, bring the whole project crashing to the ground. For at the heart of set theory was a tiny, but fundamental, paradox: could a set be a member of itself?

But undaunted, they carried on with their project. Russell continued his work at Cambridge where, one day, in through his door walked a young Austrian aeronautical engineer who had an even more ambitious programme of logical reconstruction in mind. Perhaps being a member of the second richest family in Europe helped, but Ludwig Wittgensteins's supreme self-confidence in announcing himself to the leading mathematician and philosopher of his day was not misplaced. Russell soon recognised the young man's immense talent, and also the breathtaking ambition of his project. For Wittgenstein realised that using logical to construct a complete, coherent and consistent model of a system need not be confined to mathematics. He would apply it much more widely - to the whole of existence!

His vision was simple enough to fit into one slim volume, _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ (1921), but wide enough to take in every event and every feature of the known universe. All could be represented in symbolic logic; the relationships between them were subject to known laws (science and mathematics) which were expressed as logical functions; hence, the whole of being could be represented as, modelled and understood, using the logical manipulation of well chosen symbols. The book employed the "geometric form," starting with basic definitions and axioms and then using logic to build up the full set of propositions and their corollaries. (This is also the format that Spinoza for his own masterwork, _The Ethics_ and the book's name echoes that of Spinoza's own _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus._ )

Wittgenstein's ideas inspired a philosophical movement known as the logical positivists, who grew out of that group of thinkers known as the Vienna Circle and, with the rise of Nazism, scattered around the world taking their ideas with them. There they galvanised a whole new generation of thinkers who realised their ideas need not be constrained to philosophical and mathematical abstractions; people such as Van Neumann and Turing who recognised that the symbols manipulated by the new class of machines known as computers could represent anything in the real world, not just numbers.

But even as the ideas began to seep into tangible products, the philosophers and mathematicians who spawned them were having a harder time. The flaw spotted by Russell had grown into a fissure before Gödel's incompleteness theorems brought the whole edifice crashing down. Effectively, Gödel proved that no system can be full defined within itself. Without an external reference point, all was circular logic and tautology.

Wittgenstein recanted his _Tractatus_ and turned his attention to language. He realised that, like mathematics, language itself is a closed system, where words have no meaning outside the context they're used in. "The limits of my language means the limits of my world." Philosophical problems only arise when philosophers attempt to bestow upon them some deeper, fundamental meaning.

Now philosophers were in a spot. They had killed God in the certain hope of finding a coherent and complete explanation of the universe based on reason logic and logic. To lose one certainty may have been regarded as a misfortune; to lose two within the space of a century could look like carelessness, or worse. Nihilism, existentialism and absurdism rushed to fill the void from which certainty had been driven, and claimed there could be no real meaning in a purposeless universe.

But engineers have no time for such angst, and they worked on with a new purpose. For them, the uncertainties of quantum mechanics could be harnessed to create miniaturised circuits capable of handling information on a scale Turing and Van Neumann could only have dreamt of. Their ideas were proved in straightforward commercial applications such as accounting and payrolls, but early computer technology also helped to put man on the moon. Just as Wittgenstein had said, symbolic logic could be used to represent any feature on earth, or beyond.

I wonder what that young man who burst into Russell's room that day would make of it all? Just one hundred years ago all these ideas were just esoteric academic abstractions, so what language could we possibly use to explain supercomputers, smart phones, games stations, media players, virtual worlds, 3D games, internet Google and Wikipedia to someone from that era? I like to think that, given a little time to take that young aeroengineer through all the wonders that have followed behind his ground-breaking work, step by step, he would soon catch on.

After all, it's only logical.

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# The birthday shoes

The figure with the brown parcel tucked under his arm trudged past the piles of dirty grey snow at the side of the road, tainted by the ash and soot from the tall chimneys behind him. Thin rays from the sinking sun warmed it just enough to produce feeble trickles of water that soaked through the doctor's thin soles. The winter that never ends, he thought bitterly. Back home, a million miles from this bleakness, spring would be painting new life onto the hills and the valleys. Here was nothing but endless grey and damp. And ahead of him, where the trickles converged, a muddy puddle blocking his way. Hanging on tightly to the parcel he took a short run and attempted the leap. He didn't quite make it. Mud splattered his trousers.

But, he told himself as he brushed futilely at the fabric, there's no point moaning. He was there for a reason; there was a job to do. And things could be worse. Patting the parcel, he smiled to think of the pleasure it was about to bring.

He half lifted, half shoved at the rickety gate of their house - if you could use such a grand word to describe the little wooden shack they were billeted in. It had been hanging off one hinge since they arrived, but you couldn't get anyone to fix things like that around here. Not with the war on. As he closed it there was a sharp screech that he at first mistook for the hinge squeaking, but it resolved itself into the whistle of a distant train. Yes, out over the plains to the south he could see the puffs of dirty wood smoke approaching. He fancied he could hear the engine labouring up the final gradient. He'd always liked trains: the raw power of the rods as they forced the wheels around, the deafening shriek that shook the ground under your feet as the mighty beast roared past, spewing out steam and smoke that became a dense fog that finally lifted enough for you to see the two pin-pricks of disappearing red tail-lights.

As a boy he'd once told his father he wanted to be an engine driver when he grew up. His father's laughter mystified him. 'I think you've got more to offer the world than that, son,' he'd said. And, of course, he was right. Now the doctor could laugh himself at the memory. How ridiculous it would have been to waste his talents on a locomotive footplate. He drew himself up, turned away from the decrepit gate and caught his first glimpse of the party going on in the house.

Just inside the window were paper bags, painted gaily and hung up like balloons. Painted strips of old newspaper hung down from the ceiling. They made poor decorations, but war makes paupers of us all, he thought. The children didn't care. Five, no six, of them, jumping up and down. Or were they dancing? Reaching the door he heard the gramophone playing. They must be dancing. The music stopped and started - they were playing musical chairs. He pictured Waltraud in the corner, lifting the needle on and off the vinyl pressing, beaming at them. He smiled and hurried to open the rickety outer door, quietly so as not to announce his arrival too soon.

He placed the parcel carefully on top of the umbrella stand while he hauled off his sodden boots and slipped on his house shoes. The music and laughter continued – they hadn't noticed him. Gathering up the parcel he held it awkwardly with one hand behind his back, then swung the inner door open with a flourish.

'It's Papa!'

Of course, it was Else who saw him first. Letting out a squeal of joy and anticipation, she broke from the little group dancing around the three chairs in the middle of the room. She ran up to jump in his arms, as she always did. Only today, he couldn't catch her so easily and she dangled awkwardly from one arm, before dropping back to the floor. She looked up, puzzled, then guessed what his other arm might be holding. Her face lit up, and she tried to reach around him.

Laughing, the doctor lifted the parcel up above her head. She jumped, and missed.

'Papa, what is it? What is it? It's for me, isn't it? My birthday present! Please, please give it to me!'

He leant over and kissed her head, still holding the parcel up out of her reach.

'Later, my darling. Patience. Go back to your friends and finish your game.'

But the game had stopped. How could such trivia continue in so eminent a presence? The gaggle of mothers grouped around the gramophone looked on with approval, while their children's eyes widened with envy at the sight of the parcel. Waltraud broke away from her friends to greet him with a kiss, using the moment to whisper in his ear.

'What's in the parcel? Is it...'

The man nodded and smiled, a finger to his mouth. He extended a hand to greet the other mothers. One, a thin woman with a razor sharp nose, stepped forward enthusiastically to take it.

'Good evening, Herr Doctor. It is so good to meet you at last. We've heard so much about your work,' she said, then added with a slightly embarrassed dip of her head. 'I am Frau Koffler, the wife of....'

He clicked and inclined, graciously. It cost him nothing. 'Of course, of course. I've heard about you too. I greatly enjoy working with your husband.'

He didn't mind the adulation, even if it was just from these simple women. It prefigured the glories to come, his triumphal return to Nuremberg and the real accolades, from his peers and dignitaries, not just from family friends; when he took up the Chair they would have to offer him in recognition of the industrial contracts his research would bring to the university; when his portrait hang on the hallowed walls. Yes, he decided, he would make a fine picture hanging in Nuremberg.

'My husband says... is it true? The cures you are finding...?'

The poor woman was burbling in his presence. That was something he would have to get used to. 'Yes, we are finding many cures. Our work here is fruitful. The world will truly be a better place when we've got them all in production.'

'Oh, yes, _such_ a better world we're building, in so many ways...'

Waltraud came to the rescue. 'Coffee and cake, my treasure?'

'Thank you.'

He placed the parcel amongst the cake crumbs on the table and sat down. Waltraud poured a cup then clapped her hands to resume the game, lifting and lowering the gramophone needle, interrupting Marlene Dietrich in mid growl. Else won, of course, despite having her attention constantly distracted by the parcel. She accepted her prize and applause impatiently then ran across. 'Please, Papa, please. Now!'

He took hold of the parcel and began to shake his head, but he felt Waltraud's hand lightly on his shoulder. She whispered again, 'don't be cruel to her. Let her have them.'

His head stopped mid-shake and he allowed a smile to spread across his face. He pushed the parcel across the table. Now it was within reach, Else seemed unable to believe it. She stood still for a moment, gazing open-mouthed at the brown paper. Then she grabbed the parcel before he could change his mind, pulling it towards her, and yanking on the roughly tied string that bound it together. The other children gathered round, mouths open. They, too, had heard about the great doctor and his miracle cures that were being made into pills and potions for all sorts of diseases, which was fine if a bit dull. But this parcel was more the sort of miracle that they were interested in.

Tight adult knots were too much for over-excited childish fingers. Giving up on the string, Else tore into the paper itself, strewing brown tatters in all directions until – unbelievably – there they were: the brightest, shiniest prettiest pair of red shoes she could ever imagine!

She set them on the table with the same care as her mother would set out their best china. Craning her head around, she inspected them from all angles. She enjoyed feeling the other children crowding around her, hearing their gasps. Waltraud clapped her hands and the other mothers joined in, congratulating the brand-new eleven year-old for having such a clever, generous papa. The doctor sipped at his coffee, pretending it was someone else they were talking about.

There were little holes in the uppers forming the shapes of butterfly wings and ladybirds, and silver buckles glistened on the thin straps. Else hooked a finger under each strap and lifted up the shoes to examine them even more closely. She peered inside them. Now the doctor watched her. He registered the instant when she noticed, the briefest flicker of disappointment twitching her smile. But Else was good, and Else was brave. She would understand they couldn't be new – even her Papa couldn't have managed that much of a miracle. As she nibbled lightly on her lip he could almost hear her telling herself not to be so selfish, and when she looked up again, her eyes shone bright with genuine delight.

'Oh, thank you, Papa, thank you. They're wonderful!'

'Well, try them on. I think they're your size.'

She rushed to obey him, the act of inserting her feet like the planting of a flag, staking her own claim, overriding any prior one.

'Oh, so beautiful!' gasped the women as the other children looked on, some hiding their jealousy better than others.

He felt a hand slip into his, and felt the moistness of Waltraud's lips on his cheek. 'You're wonderful. You've made her so happy.'

'They look good on her, no?'

She nodded. 'Our little princess.'

Waltraud gave herself to him that night, only the third time in the eight months since they'd arrived at that place, and they made love with a passion he'd thought they'd forgotten. Afterwards, she lay with her head on his chest and he stroked it tenderly, his fingers playing with the tight black curls.

'She wanted to go to bed in them,' whispered Waltraud.

He laughed. 'I trust she hasn't. It's not at all good for little feet, sleeping in shoes.'

He felt his wife stir, putting a hand to her face as she did when she was anxious.

'They are... clean, aren't they?'

'Of course. I gave them a good polish before I brought them home. And gave the soles a good brush, too.'

'What about... inside?'

He thought he felt a little shudder on his belly.

'I wiped inside, too, with a cloth and a little disinfectant. All traces gone, I promise you.'

'But what about...?'

He sighed. 'Indelible ink, like a tattoo. The leather's marked for good, I fear. So typical of them. Of course, I tried to rub it out, but they always leave such a stubborn trace, don't they? So hard to eradicate. But it might fade, a little, with wear. Don't worry about it.' He kissed the top of her head. She didn't respond.

'Did you see her?'

'Who?'

'The... the one who had the shoes?'

'Yes.'

Of course he had seen her. As soon as she'd half jumped, half fallen out of the railway truck, he saw she was about the same size as Else. His eyes had gone straight to the feet – they seemed in the same proportion, so the shoes should be the right size. He made a tiny gesture with his pen towards the girl and one of the uniformed guards grabbed hold and dragged her to him. It took another two soldiers to hold back the mother. He'd ostentatiously examined her from the top of her louse infested head down to the red tip of the shoes, although his only interest was in the latter. Even in their filthy, scuffed state after two days in the cattle truck, he reckoned they would polish up well.

'She must be the same size as Else. The same age.' Waltraud's voice sounded distant.

'I guess she is. Was.'

He'd had to get her into the experimental compound to make sure he got hold of the shoes. This was his domain, where his word was law. Anywhere else in the camp they would have been added to the piles in the general stores that were looked over by the fat sergeant Hesse. He kept all the good items back for the senior officers and black market heavies.

'It's funny, isn't it? They're like us in so many ways, even though they're a completely different race.'

'An inferior race,' he corrected, quickly.

Her finger was making tiny circles on his belly. 'But what I don't understand is can they really be so different from us? I mean, wouldn't that make all your wonderful experiments invalid, for us? All the wonderful cures you invent would only work on them, not on us, wouldn't they?'

He laughed a little but-you-don't-understand-my-dear sort of laugh. 'No, no. Superficially similar physical characteristics, that's all. Different race, different growth patterns, different genetic provenance. They're destined to die out naturally through evolution, not fit to survive.' He was never sure if she was completely taken in by his scientific bluster.

Perhaps she wasn't. She said, slowly, 'Ruth Krawitz.'

'What?'

'Her name. Didn't you notice?'

'Yes, yes, of course I did.' He'd had quite enough of that name. As she'd sat on the plank that served as a couch and he conducted his preliminary examination, she said it over and over: 'my name is Ruth Krawitz, and I'm with my mother, Frau Hannah Krawitz. Please take me back to her.' She spoke clearly, holding up her head and pronouncing every syllable as if she were the adult, speaking to a child. A bit like Else did. He'd told himself that all little girls spoke that way, as he administered the injection.

'It seems a pity.'

'What does?' He heard the tetchiness in his voice that always crept in when he felt challenged. Why did Waltraud have to persist with these questions? When he was doing so much for her, for the family, for the fatherland...

'That the name is indelible. It spoils them for Else.'

Oh, yes. That. Yes, a pity.' But his thoughts had taken another track. He didn't want to talk about Ruth Krawitz any more.

From out across the Polish plains came the screech of another train whistle. More subjects coming in, more work to do. He wouldn't get a chance to do any paperwork tomorrow, so maybe it was best to get it done now. Yes, his work must continue. Work makes freedom, after all. He would do it now, this minute, get his results from today written up and despatched back to Nuremberg tomorrow, no time to lose. He pushed her head off his chest and swung himself out of bed.

She moaned and sat up, surprised to see him pulling on his trousers and slipping the braces over his shoulders. 'Where are you going?'

'I must work. I have reports to write and I won't get a chance tomorrow. Too much work. No time to think.'

He saw her frown. 'What did you say?'

He replayed his words in his head and heard the error. 'No time to lose. That's what I said. No time to lose.'

He stumbled out of their room and across to the table, setting the blood red shoes carefully to one side as he opened his note book and buried himself in the neatly written experiment notes.

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# Golden age and national shame

From the Burning Issues blog on my website. Posted 14 January.

Spinoza was born and raised in Holland during its Golden Age of prosperity, when it dominated world trade through its technical and military prowess, strengthened by the commercial ties of many immigrants who arrived in search of the religious freedoms supported by the progressive and liberal policies of its leaders. But this age did not last, and towards the end of his life Spinoza experienced a rapid change in the political atmosphere, when the very real threat of invastion by the French generated a paranoia throughout Holland, who feared the "enemy within" who, they imagined, were collaborating with the French. As tension mounted, conservative religious factions seized the moment to overthrow the liberal and enlightened leaders. Some of Spinoza's best friends met horrific and gruesome ends at the hands of the reactionaries, who maintained that only a strong, authoritative leadership could save them.

Throughout this turmoil Spinoza continued to push his ideas, through the publication of his Theologico-Political Treatise, for the ideal state at peace with itself and providing space for its people to think – and speak – freely. And, he concluded, the best form of leadership to ensure a state is governed for the benefit of its people was a democracy. His reward was to be hounded at every turn by the conservative forces, and so threatened that he dared not publish again during his lifetime.

Nonetheless, Holland was able, in time, to regain the world's respect for its tolerance and justice - once it had let go of its notions of world supremacy and accepting its right place in the world. Perhaps it is time for another state, today, to abandon its delusions of supremacy and find a more peaceful, constructive role for itself.

This week sees the tenth anniverary of the illegal detention and torture centre at Guantanamo Bay. The camp is itself just a part of the US reaction to the attacks of September 2001, in which it has invested unprecedented amounts of money it does not have in arming itself and pursuing violent conflict in several countries. The country's leaders claims that the possibly millions of deaths, and certainly millions of people displaced, are justified and lawful consequences for the attacks they suffered ten years ago. But the stories that continue to emerge of the abuse meted out by its armed forces to the innocent citizens of foreign countries, including abductions, torture and mitual humiliations, give the lie to these claims of lawfulness.

Spinoza believed that this sort of behaviour would not happen in a democracy. But the democracy he envisaged, based on rational, informed debate, was very different from the one we see at the moment in the US. It seems most time and resources in the current Republican promaries are directed towards personal insults and mud-slinging between candidates, with today's bombshell, apparently, being the revelation of the hideous fact that a candidate once spoke French!

But the fact is that the US, like Holland before it, will have to bow to economic reality. Cut-backs to military spending have already been announced, as the country faces up to the fact of its debt and its inability to service it and continue pouring money into military adventurism. It make take a while for some citizens of the US, pumped up on violence and the myth of their superiority, to accept their place as just another state in the community of nations. But I am sure I am not alone in looking forward to the day they do.

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# Oaths and other ethical issues

From the Philosophical Engineer blog on the IET's Engineering & Technology Magazine website. Posted 20 September.

Should engineers swear?

OK, an odd thing to ask but it provides an example, if a bit trivial, of an ethical question. Perhaps swearing is one of those things you just don't do, because it's wrong. Or maybe it depends whose company you're in: it's acceptable in front of the lads at work, but not at home with the family. Either way, in the cold light of rationality we know that mere words can't do actual harm, but still we understand that other people may take offence at them, and it's out of respect for them that we cut the cussing.

Making decisions about our actions, taking into account their effects on other people, is what ethics is about. It's the branch of philosophy that many people are most comfortable with; when we say we have our own philosophy, we often mean we have our own set of internal rules or "code of conduct" that we aspire to live by, and that we use to make our decisions.

And making decisions is what we humans do _par excellence_. We pick our way through an incredibly complex physical and cultural landscape, using a lifetime's worth of memories and associations to link whatever situation we find ourselves in with some relevant part of our learned history in order to decide our next steps. We can do this because our enormous brains that have evolved to perform pattern-matching on a massive scale, making many more decisions each day than we can ever be fully aware of. Picking a moment to cross the road, judging if it's safe to overtake, choosing whether or not to smile at a stranger we pass in a night-time street, the slick efficiency of our brains allows us constantly to make potentially life-changing choices that we scarcely even notice.

This ability to leap to quick, pragmatic judgements has given us humans a massive evolutionary benefit, but does it come at a cost? Perhaps we don't always give full consideration to alternative, less obvious, actions. In our eagerness to get on and live our lives to the max, do we always take the time to consider some of the prejudices and superstitions, often picked up during our early childhood years, that still shape our actions as adults?

Taking things too much for granted is the danger Socrates warned of, when he said the unexamined life is not worth living. But how do we go about examining our lives? How often should the examinations take place?

For many of us, it is the big events in our lives that provide moments of reflection. Births and deaths, new year's resolutions, the big four-zero and mid-life crises all give occasion to rethink priorities and perhaps make changes in our approach to life. Other ceremonies too, like weddings, publicly professing a religious creed or taking an oath.

Which takes us back to engineers swearing. The  recent edition of E&T (Vol 7 Iss 2) that looked at the topic of professional ethics focused in particular on whether engineers would benefit from taking a formal oath. It reported a straw poll conducted at an IET event to test the participants' response to the question. The result was that the respondents split roughly evenly into three camps, that perhaps also reflect the way we approach ethical decisions in other parts of our lives.

The first group welcomed the idea of an engineers' oath, and the opportunity to this major, binding decision, on their future lives in front their peers, and possibly some higher authority. A lot of us like this sort of ceremony and the feeling of constancy it brings in an uncertain world, and we are happy to make a public commitment because we know it gives us a framework for our future decisions, and a means to defend them, if necessary, by reference to our public vow. Perhaps it also means we don't have to think so hard about those decisions.

The second group saw the value in a code of conduct but considered the swearing of oaths old-fashioned and unnecessary. In other words, they are happy to let others provide a set of rules for them to go along with, but not necessarily commit to fully. I suspect that if a wider survey was performed this group would comprise more than a third of the population.

The last group "trusted the questions of ethics to be answered by the wider cultural forces of education and common sense". In other words, they'll make their own minds up, thank you very much. While some might see this as a cop-out, an easy way to avoid responsibility, it's actually the reverse. Taking full responsibility is hard work. Socrates said, "the greatest good of a man is to converse about virtue daily" but Spinoza saw true freedom as exercising rational thought in _every_ action, taking into account not just the action itself and its likely consequences, but also our own motivations. For him, knowing what we want to do is not enough; it's also necessary to understand _why_ we want to do it _._ Even with our enormous brains, is it possible to apply this much reasoning to every action we make? Perhaps not - we'd probably end up doing nothing at all, and still be exhausted by the sheer mental effort of doing so.

It appears we all have different approaches to working out how to live our lives, balancing the pragmatic and pensive. After five thousand years, has philosophy come up with the answer to which way is best? Perhaps not yet, but looking at the history and ideas of ethics can give us a lot to think about. And that surely can't be a bad thing.

But as for whether or not it's OK for engineers to swear, well, I'm bu****ed if I know!

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# Why stop at trading carbon emissions?

From the Burning Issues blog on my website. Posted 23 July.

The following email came recently to our attention. It was addressed to the heads of several dozen multinational corporations.

Dear * _name redacted_ *

Following the huge success of the carbon emissions trading scheme, we are proud to reach out to you, as Chief Executive of < _redacted_ > Corporation, and offer you the chance to be in at the ground floor of the launch of our exciting new criminal rights monetisation and exchange (CRiME) program.

Here at CRiME we are concerned that the criminal law systems of all nations consider certain misdemeanors, which are clearly proscribed by law, to be of too trivial a nature to justify the costs of prosecution. In a very real ongoing sense, this situation _d_ _e facto_ grants all citizens a certain allowance of criminal activity during their lifetimes. Research shows that as most citizens are fundamentally law-abiding, the vast majority of these allowances are _simply never used_ , so that this valuable resource of permitted criminiality _is wasted_. I am sure you will agree this situation cannot be allowed to continue. Hence the objective of CRiME is to ensure the most efficient and effective use of this underused resource for the benefit of society and mankind in general.

Our specific proposal is that each citizen's allowance of "tariff free criminal activity" be quantified using a system of "criminal credits". The exact allowance will, of course, be set by governments (at least until the privatization of the law making process is complete) but we propose the following example of a Lifetime Criminal Allowance:

1. Littering, jay-walking and anti-social behaviors - up to 10 incidents

2. Parking and speeding - 5 lifetime events

3. Theft of goods and cash up to a value of $500

4. Two acts of violence incurring actual bodily harm

5. One half of an act of violence incurring grievous bodily harm. (This half measure could reflect, for instance, being one of two people implicated in a single act of violence.)

6. One fifth of a major act of theft, such as a burglary or armed robbery

7. One hundredth of a murder

Once allocated to individuals, a free market will be set up to allow law-abiding citizens to trade their rights and so benefit fully and fairly from their otherwise wasted resources. The allocations may then be acquired, say, by corporations who, for the general benefit of the wider society, engage in activities that of necessity involve a degree of risk of violating, unwittingly, some local legal constraints. For example, essential oil and other mineral exploration which might otherwise be obstructed by intransigent local resistance, can proceed knowing there is, say, a quota of up to one hundred homicides available to offset the measures need to clear the ground. Innovative and forward looking banks can proceed with valuable trading initiatives without fear of criminal reprisals if a particular national administration should take an over enthusiastic interpretation of regulations.

I am sure you can think of many more useful applications of this principle!

I am also sure you will agree that this forward thinking and exciting proposal offers a genuine and compelling win-win situation in which society will:

 Allow us all to benefit from the marketisation of one of society's most undervalued resources - lawfulness

 Release new capital flows to fund much needed development in areas of mineral extraction and financial innovation, among many others

 Allow right-thinking corporations to proceed with research and development projects unhindered by the fear of criminal prosecution associated with unwitting or inadvertently straying outside the parameters of strict legal compliance.

Membership of CRiME is by invitation only. We estimate an annual fee of $10m will be sufficient to cover the lobbying and PR costs required to see the necessary legislation enacted in the principal nations where we would see CRiME operating. We do hope you will elect to join us in this most worthwhile initiative.

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# The young artist

How much more could the brilliant young man achieve if he didn't have to waste his days in the company of the monstrous Marie and mice?

The young artist is dreaming when the muezzin's cry starts up, dragging him out from a sleep that has lasted barely four hours. A paint stained hand reaches out from under the duvet and slaps around in search of the _adhan's_ source. It finds its target – a lime green plastic alarm clock in the shape of a mosque – and the cry ceases. He hates the thing, but hangs onto it out of fond memory of the girlfriend – was it Mary-Allen or Jozie? - who brought it back for him from a girlie shopping trip to Dubai. He also keeps it because, like so much of the world around him, he finds it ironic.

Beneath the cover his nose twitches and sniffs the man-smell of unwashed sheets mingled with the pungent odours of oils and thinners. He loves that smell, and the way it seeps into any fabric that spends more than a few minutes in his Metroland bed-sit. It marks his territory. With no particular girlfriend in tow at present, there's no need to waste money on the launderette. A service wash saved means half a tube of oil paint. Or, looked at another way, an hour's less slavery in the great blue hangar under the beady eye of the monstrous Marie.

He forces his sticky lips to part and his wooden tongue to scratch around a mouth still desiccated by the whisky and dope he was consuming until – when was it? – four this morning. He groans and drags a hand over his face. What was he thinking of? He pictures the day ahead, eight hours shackled to his pig-pen by the cord of that bloody headset, answering as politely as he can manage the moaning phone calls from moronic customers. The thought almost drives him back under the duvet.

Almost. But now it all comes back to him and his heart pounds as he recalls exactly what kept him going in those small hours. Can it be true? Or is it just some cruel trick of a substance-addled brain? He lifts his head up from the trashed pillow, rubs sleep from scratchy eyes and peers own the length of his body. And there it is, beyond his feet and propped up against the wall, resting on a footstall. There's no room in this bed-sit for an easel big enough to take this canvas - his work that needs space to express itself. In the grudging grey sunlight that penetrates his grimy window he can make out the top part of the work, and he sees that it is good. Hope surging, he hurls the duvet away and kneels up to take in the full canvas.

He catches his breath. It _is_ good. God, is it good. Now memories flood in from the long night, the slapping and carving and shaping, the forcing of his will on the thick layers of oil, recreating shapes that burned in his mind. He feels a little nauseous, but what is physical discomfort in the presence of a work such as this? At the very first sight the piece reaches out and grabs the viewer, demanding a pure, visceral response that feels like a million volts penetrating the eyes and hammering down into the gut. First there's the brash concoction of cobalt blue blocks – perfect cubes, like children's building blocks or crisply wrapped presents – that sucker the eye into perceiving a cold order in the work. But the illusion lasts only a moment before the eye realises it's been deceived, the sharp edges blur and morph into hideous grey organs, proboscises and protuberances that, just as the eye adapts to this apparent new nature, take on almost human appearance, with wild hair and eyes that stare back out of the canvas.

The subtle interplay of lines and curves hauntingly tease the viewer with familiar echoes of the everyday, the sublimation of organic and inorganic laying bare the very nature of the human condition in an artificial environment and challenging the consciousness to define them. Yet even as the eye gropes and grapples with these contradictions, it finds it can no longer ignore the bright splatters of red that haemorrhage diagonally across the canvas. Are they bringers of life? Or do they take it away?

And then the eye, overwhelmed by the stark brutality of this relentless presentation of life in all its contradictions and uncertainties, seeks desperately some point of reference, some clue to go on, a point of anchor in the stormy sea. It begins to explore the outer reaches, the background of verdant plateau reposing under a pale blue cover, with Miroesque teardrops of white and grey – are they animals? rabbits or mice? - a flickering pastoral hope skirting the periphery of the Stygian heart.

He squints, tilts his head, surveying what his hands have wrought. Yes, it is good. He leans in, back, crawls forward over the duvet to get a closer look. Good, but it's not quite... it just needs... he must... He chews his lips, he already sees the gashes of red needed just there, across the centre and penetrating – yes, that's it, penetrating! - the ice blue cube. But it must wait till the evening. As soon as he gets back from that place, he's going to have to... No! It can't wait. He glances at the loathsome lime green timepiece and calculates. Maybe, if he skips his shower, and breakfast, again... Bugger, who needs breakfast anyway?

A quick search reveals the tube of oil kicked under his bed and the palette knife thrust into the dried-out soil of the flower pot with the rotted remains of some hideously expensive tropical flower that someone –Rachel? – had once brought him. He sets to work, squeezing and scraping, slashing and shaping, now peering in to the very weave of the canvas, now falling onto his bed to take in the full canvas and plan his next assault.

He works furiously against that nagging feeling that he must, he _really must_ get off soon. If he's late he'll have that hormonal androgyne Marie on his case again. She'll put him back onto Complaints and he'll have to listen politely to the hundred whingeing, moaning calls that will suck the very lifeblood from him, all the while responding in his brightest voice to present _the right company image_. At the thought of it a tortured howl rips painfully from his parched throat and he renews his attacks on the canvas with vigour. With a final flourish he puts the top on the tube, wipes off the palette knife and grabs the jeans and mildly ironic tee-shirt – an image of Barack Obama superimposed onto the cover of Uncle Tom's Cabin – from where he dropped them the night before. With bare feet forced into trainers whose laces are a solid knot he gave up trying to undo weeks ago, he is off.

As he approaches the stop there's a big red bastard bus about to pull off. He makes a run for it, calling out and waving, but just as he puffs up behind it the sod pulls off. In its big ear-like mirror he glimpses the satisfaction on the driver's face. He must have been watching him, his foot on the gas, gunning the engine but hanging on, holding on, hanging on until just the right moment of release when he lets the great brute pull away and gets off on the rapture of agony wrought on the artist's face. It's probably the only kicks the poor sod gets out of life, thinks the young artist, comforting himself in a blanket of contempt. The nearest he gets to sex. Not that the artist's got so much to crow about in that direction himself.

Except for Gwen.

And suddenly he remembers that she's coming, tonight, and with that memory his hatred of the bus, its driver, even Marie and the call centre, are blown away. Gwen will come tonight and he's going to show her the canvas. She will love it. And him. He leans against the wrecked bus shelter, ignoring the scrunch of broken glass embedding itself in the soles of his trainers, and closes his eyes. He daydreams, picturing her reaction when she sees the picture. He sees her enraptured, like on her first encounter with his work. He hears her praise ringing in his ears, and pictures her face rapt, mouth open, turning slowing away from the canvas and towards him. Her passion as the face pushes itself forcefully, consumingly, into his own... He sighs, happily, and opens his eyes again.

There's a bus standing at the stop and its driver looks at him quizzically, shrugs and is about to pull off. The young artist lets out a yelp and springs forward, just as the doors are shutting, stained fingers groping in the ripped jean pocket for his Oystercard.

It might as well be a cart taking him off to the gallows; the gormless, gawping follow-passengers should be clicking knitting needles rather than reading papers and doing bloody Sudokus. Every inch the bus crawls along the choking artery drags him ever further from his real work and closer to the great blue dungeon where he'll spend his day. Dreary residential suburbs, devoid of light, colour and interest. He shuts his eyes and tries to summon up the image of his magnificent canvas but the dread of his day job intrudes, the great bland face of Marie looming ever larger and more menacing in his mind. He allows himself another daydream, that she'll be late herself and he'll be spared her sarc. Fat chance! Or maybe she'll be off sick again, a martyr to her "woman's issues", as she chooses to euphemise it. She lives a life of euphemisms. No pain, sickness, problems or fear exist in her world; only issues, challenges and opportunities to rise to. Stupid cow.

He drags himself off the bus and crosses the pavement to join the queue for the cranking, ratcheting turnstile. But his path into the hangar itself is barred by the miserable security guard with the Hitler moustache who holds up a hand. The usual ritual. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the pass card on its dayglo orange noose. Only when he hangs it around his neck does the guard let out a satisfied grunt and lower his hand. The artist proceeds, wondering why don't they just brand their workers on the forehead and have done with it.

He spots her as he approaches the work stations assigned to his team, larger than life and twice as ugly. Of course she's not sick, or late. She's perched in her team leader's stall that sits across the end of his row of pig-pens, looking pointedly at the flimsy excuse for a watch that hangs off her plump wrist and that she has to squint to tell the time from. She smiles at him, euphemistically, as he slumps into his seat.

'Traffic issues, again?' Hauling herself out of her seat she comes to stand behind him as he logs into his PC. He smells her perfume, more generous in its application than in its purchase, overpowering even the sweet fragrance of paints and thinners seeping from his clothing.

'Yeah.' He doesn't look round. 'Big smash up on the North Circular, or something. Hangar Lane was, like, nowhere.'

'Funny, it was clear when I came in. Still, that was quite a while ago and so much can happen in a short space of time, can't it? Anyway, I assume you'll make up the time tonight so we'll say no more about it. Pity, though, as you weren't here when we agreed today's assignments. You'll be on complaints today. Again.'

He closes his eyes and groans. The computer is churning through its start-up routine, his last moment of respite before the onslaught. Around him the other drones are already hard at it, listening, explaining, excusing. Inside, the walls of the hangar are light blue, with green flooring and grey furniture. The clash of colours always makes him a little queasy, especially in the mornings. But there are still faces and angles for him to draw, even there. He pulls a sheaf of paper from his pocket and smoothes it out in the tiny area of his table-top not occupied by keyboard and (ironic) company mouse mat. Talking of mice, little Emily in the pig-pen opposite is in between calls. She's heard their conversation, and smiles in sympathy with the artist. Emily wears her hair in girlish pig-tails that swish sometimes when she's on a tricky call.

The PC is ready now and with a sigh he clamps on the head-set. He's now shackled to the workstation until he can reasonably take his first fag break, an achingly long two hours hence. The screen displays a green button with the dreaded words: "Ready for new call." With a deep sigh, he prods it.

The response is immediate. An artificial voice whispers in his ear, 'complaint. Waiting five minutes', as the screen fills up with caller's details. He begins his patter.

'Good morning, sorry to keep you waiting, you're through to ... yes, of course, please... yes, the item is guaranteed for a year, can you tell me exactly the circumstances... I see, but please understand the guarantee only covers normal wear and tear.' The hangar roof is supported by a network of metal beams that create intricate patterns that drift and change with only a slight movement of the head. He takes up his pencil and starts to sketch. He told Marie once it's just a displacement activity to help him concentrate on the caller. Marie believed him. Stupid cow.

'But, being dropped from a second floor balcony can't really be considered normal wear and tear... yes, I accept we all have different ideas of normal, but... no, madam, I'm not making any value judgements about your lifestyle...' His picture has started off as the organic cubes of his painting, but as the call progresses it becomes more organic. 'No, I'm afraid I'm not authorised to put you through to the chairman... well, if that's how you feel, please feel free write to him. All your letters are important to us.' The doodle is now human-like, with piercing eyes and hideously contorted features. '...you might be right, Madam, perhaps your MP might sort this out. No, I'm afraid I don't know the name of your local MP, but if he takes up your issue we'll be more than happy to hear from him... Yes, Madam, you're right, your MP might well be a woman, it was indeed sexist of me to suggest otherwise... Yes, Madam. You do that. I'm very sorry I couldn't be of more assistance on this...'

She's gone. One complaint down, God knows how many to come. The important thing is, he's got thirty seconds to type his wrap-up notes before he takes the next call. If he misses this target, an alarm pop-up will appear on Marie's screen to alert her to his non-performance. Somehow, through an extreme effort of will, he manages to refrain from typing "mentalist bitch" as the wrap-up, and has time for a ten second breather before the next call.

And so he survives until, thank God, he can retreat to heaven – also known as Smokers' Corner, the tiny spot under the fire stairs at the back, which grudgingly offers smokers a little shelter from the elements.

Here the artist deftly rolls his own, slips it between his lips and bums a light from the fashionably bald bloke in ironic braces next to him. The artist takes a long, deep drag on his roll-up, his cheeks sucking in and his eyes narrowing, and nods appreciation towards bald bloke. He knows him, but won't admit it. He's in marketing, one of those laughingly called "creatives". Luvvies who couldn't create a paper bag out of a sheet of brown paper and glue, the artist reflects thoughtfully. Endlessly recycling the mundane, the obvious and each others' ideas in an eternal love-in of onanistic self-reference. God, if they gave him a go at marketing then they'd find out what creativity _really_ means. He closes his eyes and dreams of a multi-media on-line and TV ad campaign featuring his own, unique visual interpretation of their products. That'd make the punters sit up and take notice. He talked about that idea once, with Gwen. She laughed and said the British public weren't quite ready yet for such a visual onslaught in the mass media. She's probably right: she knows more about such things than he'd like her to, thanks to the endless poncey dinner parties she has to attend with her banker of a husband. He inhales deeply, and rolls the word around in his mind: _banker_. Even when he's not saying it out loud, he still relishes the sound of the word.

But now he's thinking of Gwen again, and he remembers her last visit, how she turned up with that hungry look in her eye under her wild flowing red hair, the floral dress hanging off her boyish figure that danced and played around her multi-coloured striped stockings. One look and he was sure they'd end up fucking that night, but then she'd seen the canvas and her look changed and told him there'd be no fucking that night. Her eyes narrowed, and there was the slightest curl of her lip as she lit up her fag – a Marlboro light, no rollies for her – and surveyed the piece.

'So, what's wrong with it?' he heard himself ask, petulant, like when she was still his tutor and he harboured a crazy idea that he might possess her. She tilted her head and blew smoke up to his ceiling. It didn't have far to go. It hovered there for a moment, trapped, like him, in a confined space outside her head.

'I've got a first year student does better than that,' she said after a moment, then added, 'in fact, I think they all do.'

'Fucking thanks. Perhaps you'd better spend your time with them, then, and not waste it with me.' Petulance turned to sulks and he threw himself onto the bed. She was still considering the canvas. 'You're too comfortable. It's becoming a hobby. You're becoming a phone drone who paints in his spare time.'

His mouth dried and he felt like hitting her. OK, so work hadn't been getting quite so much on his tits as usual while Marie was away. Was that such a crime? She looked at her watch, edged towards the door. Panic overtook him. He sprang to his feet.

'You're not... going, are you? We've not even had a drink...' He tailed off at the sickening sound of pleading in his own voice. She reached out to the door knob, paused, and took his face in both hands.

'Sorry, Babe. You need to get your edge back. Maybe next time, eh?'

'But...' He realised he was holding her arm. She glanced at his hand and shook it off, lightly, with only a hint of chastisement. As she turned to leave, she threw a last glance at the canvas and shook her head sadly. He hadn't seen her lips move but felt sure she uttered one more word as she left. 'Emasculated.'

'Penny for them?'

The quiet voice breaks into his thoughts and makes him start. Emily is looking up at him, one hand playing with her pony tail. She looks fragile and the artist feels an overwhelming sense of power, that he could crush her if he wanted to.

'What are you doing here? You don't smoke.'

'Perhaps I should take it up. It's not fair, only smokers being allowed to get out of the place four times a day.'

It's a good answer. She's probably rehearsed it. 'Want one?' he offers her his shag sack. She shakes her head. 'Think I ought to start on something a bit gentler, don't you?'

Once when he was young, playing in the street outside his house, he came across a young bird that the cat had been playing with. With one wing broken, it sat helplessly on the pavement, looking up at him as if pleading for mercy. He called out to his father, but he was busy in his shed and just shouted back to put it out of its misery. The boy wailed so much that his father – a real man's man who never tried to hide his disappointment in his only son – threw down his brush with a snort of irritation, came out through the gate and with one swift step of his heel dispatched the suffering creature. The artist cried himself to sleep that night, and for the next three nights.

'So, Mr Dreamer, what were you thinking of? Dreaming up more pictures?'

The artist puts Truth and Honesty above all else. So he should tell her that he's thinking of how he's going to shag his fuck-buddy senseless this evening. But he surprises himself by muttering something about how he's fed up with Marie.

'Yeah, she's horrible to you. I don't know how you take it.'

She's certainly got the hots for him, the poor cow. He takes a drag and contemplates her ears. Sure, they stick out, but it's having her hair tied back that draws attention to them. He wonders, from time to time, what she might look like with her hair down. He imagines taking her back to see the state of his place. She'd freak out. He pictures her turning to run, screaming, the little pony tail bobbing behind her.

'It doesn't matter.' He shrugs, and glances over his shoulder at the huge blue corrugated warehouse. 'Nothing really matters in this place, does it?'

She giggles, twisting a plait of hair around a finger. 'You know, your pictures are quite good.'

_Quite good_. God, what does she know. He's not sure which is worse, _quite good_ or _emasculated_. He spits out the fag end and crushes it under his heel.

'Ever thought of doing it, you know, more seriously?'

_More seriously?_ He puts his stained fingers up to his face, breathing in deeply the lingering smells. The poor, dumb creature just has no idea. The temptation is there to crush her with one of the many cheap put downs he uses on when he finds himself discussing his art with the great unwashed. But he resists it.

'It's just something I do. Fills the spaces. Displacement activity, you might call it.'

'Still, I think it's really good.' She looks down at her feet. 'Do you draw... people?'

He snorts, perhaps a little unpleasantly. 'You mean portraits?'

'Yeah, I suppose so.'

Now she looks up and there was something in her eyes. What was it? Curiosity? Hope? An offer? He laughs.

'Nah, not really. I mean, not in the way you'd recognise them.'

'Oh.' There's disappointment in there. 'You mean, you do all modern, like? With three eyes and two chins at funny angles and all that?'

Normally, this would be the cue for one of his most crushing put downs. But now he just wants to take hold of her and tell her it's all right, really, modern art isn't actually dangerous. It isn't even modern any more.

He glances at his watch.

'Better get back.'

'Yeah.'

He hangs back to let her go in first. Wouldn't do to be seen going back in with her, God knows what people might think. He still thinks about Gwen's last visit. After she left he took a long, hard look at the canvas he'd shown her. And realised how right she was. Then the rage hit him. He snatched up the palette knife, grabbed two tubes of oil - crimson and malachite – and set to work. He squeezed them directly onto the canvas, laying rich, luxuriant turds in horizontal and vertical rows, then carved into them with his palette knife, dissecting and shaping. Crimson areolae and labia, alive and pulsating, took shape beneath his hand, then putrid rotting malachite flesh, denying them their rights to live and procreate. The cow, the prick-tease! He squeezed, carved and slashed in fluid motions for the next six hours, dancing in front of the canvas, crouching and leaning forward and back, ejaculating his ideas and watching them impregnate and gestate under his knife. At some point he must have torn off his clothes, as he woke up the next morning lying naked across the bed, knife still in hand.

But now he's back at his workstation and as soon as he's entered the password the screen fills up with the details of Mrs Judith Summers of Haslemere.

'Good morning, Judith, and how may I.... I'm sorry, Mrs Summers, and how may I... Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that, but if you want to tell me the details...'

But she's not interested in listening to him, she's off on one. He slumps in his seat. The good thing about ranters is that they gives him a bit of a break. Basically, the old woman is going to talk and talk until she's had her say, during which time the only demand made of him was to make an occasional sympathetic noise.

'Hmm. I understand ...'

Of course, he still has the call handling time target to stick to - five minutes, for a complaint. But that still gives him – he reads off the call timer on the screen – three minutes twenty to let the old bat rattle on. He's no sympathy for her, or any of them, really. They buy stuff from his company because it's the cheapest on the market, so what can they expect? It's all just a game to them, he reckons. They just want to have something to moan about. They probably ring in just to have someone to talk to. In the old days, they'd go to their local shop for their daily whinge. Now it's easier to ring the call centre – on-line moaning without having to step outside the door. The really sad ones are the complainers who ring in on Christmas day. The young artist always volunteers for Christmas – at triple time plus a day in lieu he'd be mad not to, wouldn't he? It was like the Samaritans, only he got paid for it.

But now something's gone wrong. His headphone has gone silent. He checks the connection and the volume control. The call timer's still going \- she's on the line. Only she's stopped talking. When did that happen? What's she waiting for?

The artist throws a panicky glance towards Marie – she might be listening in to the call. That's what she spends most of her day doing - listening in to her team's calls. 'Quality control' as she laughingly calls it.

It's time to ad lib.

'Well, thank you Mrs Summers for explaining your problem so succinctly. He pauses, hoping to goad her into resuming her tirade and give him a clue as to what she's actually moaning about.

She says, 'well, what are you going to do about it?'

'Well, madam, it all depends on exactly how long you've had the item... yes, I know you told me it's brand new, but I mean, was that like today? Or yesterday?'

These are barely straws he's clutching at, there's more like the dappled reflections of straws breaking on the rippling surface of a stagnant pond... 'And then, of course, the exact circumstances of how the damage occurred... well, yes you did say it was broken in the box before you opened it... yes, of course I listened to every word that you said...'

Marie is smiling calmly. She's obviously not monitoring his call, or she'd be having apoplexy by now, straining against her instinct to take over the call herself and dismiss the young artist instantly, there on the spot. But the timer's still running and he has to get rid of the call within the next thirty seconds. He takes a deep breath.

'Well Mrs Summers, what I think is this... I totally agree with you... yes, I said I agree with you. The product is totally crap. Like all everything we sell.' Not a flicker on Marie's face. He ploughs on. 'So what I propose to do is send you a brand new replacement, plus a fifty pound gift voucher as compensation for all the distress you've been caused. Can't say fairer than that? Well, jolly good, Madam, and I hope you have a super day. Good bye and, no, thank _you,_ Madam.'

Call ended, four minutes and forty seven seconds. He types in the order for her replacement item and voucher, then leans back and yawns. Five minutes of his life gone, seventy pence earned. Or rather, fifty pence, after tax. It takes thirty-nine calls like that to earn one 200 ml tube of oil paint. At ten or twelve tubes per work, plus canvas and frame, that's a whole week's suffering just to get the materials for one piece of his real work. He shrugs. Better get on with it, then, no choice really. His stained finger-tip stabs viciously at the green button.

Lunch is two roll-ups, a Twix and fifty merciful minutes outside the box. He sits in the cemetery that provides a _memento mori_ just across the road from the call-centre. With his back to the blue monstrosity he sketches the headstones with the distant glimpse of hills behind, ignoring the intervening tower blocks. There is a continuity between the rolling hills and the cycles of life, he dimly remembers a school lesson about how rocks are formed from the crushed corpses of prehistoric shellfish. The sketch in his hand grows and develops, and he pictures the colours that he might use to work it up into a full painting.

Then there's a movement among the monuments and a girl approaches. For a moment he thinks it's Emily the mouse and he wonders if she's coming to join him on the old, shit splattered bench but no, it's not her. Nothing like her, really. The girl wanders past without a glance in his direction and he wonders what made him think it was Emily.

It's time to head back. He stumbles towards the cemetery gate, still looking at his sketch. The hills and headstones are still discernible, just, but they are mutating, stretching out to each other through a space now filled with fleeting figures – human or not? – while around the edges dwell other creatures, grotesque, haranguing the viewer. At the bottom lies a tiny, crushed figure. A bird, perhaps? Or a mouse?

The afternoon passes, as they always do. It crawls to a close as he does his best impression of an alert, polite, conscientious team-player, and he's wondering if he might slip away when the message flashes across his screen: "Team meeting in five. Kolkata."

He groans. If there's anything that's worse than the phones, it's Marie's team meetings. She's already rising decisively from her workstation, her lap-top under her arm, and steaming off towards the meeting rooms. Taking her cue, the other team members wrap up their calls and follow her, one by one. Perversely, the young artist hangs on to his call as long as he can, chatting through gritted teeth with Mrs Travis of Barnsley about her dust problems, until the timer reaches four minutes fifty and he can put off the dreaded moment no longer. He wraps up, unshackles himself and trudges off to Kolkata.

The meeting rooms are named after places of particular significance to the company's illustrious founder and chairman. Subhash Akhari was born in Kolkata, Ealing was where he was raised, Slough where he opened his first back street trading store, and so on. Kolkata is appropriately windowless, airless and crowded. One empty seat remains and it's in the corner furthest from the door. Marie, who stands beside the lap-top she's hitched up to the ceiling projector, makes little clucking noises as he negotiates the narrow gaps between chair backs and wall. To reach the seat he has to squeeze past the considerable bulk of Delroy Cole, who reluctantly pulls in his chair a fraction. As he finally settles into the seat, he finds himself once again opposite Emily.

'Well, as we are all here now,' begins Marie, throwing a euphemistic glance towards him, 'let's get on, shall we?' She fiddles with the projector and the wall beside her lights up: white, blue, 'searching for source' – like an African explorer going up the Nile, thinks the artist – before her first slide appears. The artist winces at the unaesthetic mess. A handful of photos and text boxes thrown together and linked with garish arrows, set against a background photo of the big blue hole itself. The colours clash and jar and he slumps deeper into his seat.

'Wow, wicked slide, Marie,' gushes Delroy. There is a general murmur of approval around the table.

'Yeah, init though? I spent hours on this,' Marie feels she has to agree. 'At home, of course, in my own time,' she adds hurriedly.

'Gotcha,' thinks the artist. 'So that's what you do all day, when you should be listening in on our conversations.'

'Anyway, a little later I actually want to talk to you about a whole raft of really cool new products that we're planning to launch in the next few weeks, and then we can workshop together what this is likely to mean for us at the customer interface ...'

More crappy products for them to complain about, thinks the artist. He draws the wodge of paper from his back pocket and begins to doodle. He glances around the table in search of a subject. Emily looks away quickly as his eyes pass over her.

Marie is hitting her stride. Her hands flap and chop the air in time with the flat rhythm of her speech, her head bobbing from side to side making little points of hair swing round below her cheeks to brush the corners of her little round mouth. From where he sits, her nose appears even more turned up than usual. The roundness of her face is accentuated by her bob hair-do and the ensemble creates a truly impressive porcine experience, as she might (or might not) have said herself.

'... but before that excitement, let's first take a wee peek at how we've been doing, performance wise, yeah? So, actually, here are our recent stats – let's share our view on these, shall we?'

The image on the wall is now a neatly laid-out table jammed with words and numbers. He squints at it, sighs, and gives up. Looking down again at the paper in his hands, he's surprised to see that, unbidden, Marie's face has appeared in it. The style is realistic, but he has slightly exaggerated the turn up of the nose and has added little pointed ears. It's not bad, he thinks. He continues drawing. He captures her hands: vertical, flapping. But now they're horizontal, chopping, so he adds another pair. And another pair, vertical, chopping. Before he knows it she's got eight arms like the goddess Shiva.

He's aware that Emily keeps glancing towards him, glimpsing her head movements from the corner of his eye. All the others are turned in their seats to be seen to give Marie their full attention, and Delroy makes little grunting noise of approval from time to time. The ripples in the deep brown folds of skin at the back of his shaven head are like a melting malteaser.

He's bored with Marie-Shiva now, and starts on a new sheet. He draws Emily, which is tricky without looking directly at her, but the image slowly takes form. She's half turned towards Marie, presenting herself in semi-profile. Her rosebud lips are parted slightly, and the reflected projector light creates sparkles in the corner of her eye. He draws thoughtfully, even poetically, shading in a hint of cheek bone here, strengthening the jaw a little there. His skill makes her image even less unattractive than the reality, and he is pleased with his work. Perhaps he should draw her, properly, like she wants. The thought brings a new image to his mind. He pictures her posing for him, full length. Nude. The fantasy provokes a physical reaction and he shifts in his seat to release the throbbing pressure in his trousers. A guilt pang overwhelms him, that he could think of the little creature in that way. He counters his shame by adding mouse ears to the portrait, embellishing them so that great round rodent appendages soon swell out from her head and fill the empty corners of the page. This does the trick and he sits more easily in his seat.

'... so well done to Tiffany!'

The sudden rise in Marie's voice is followed by a burst of applause around the table and a little whoop from Delroy. His concentration broken, he glances up to the league table now projected next to Marie. Tiffany's name is highlighted in red at the top, with little balloons drifting upwards from each letter. He sees his own name at the bottom, with a dunce's cap sitting on the initial letter.

Marie is looking at him.

'Not clapping? Don't you want to celebrate Tiffany's awesome achievement? We all think she rocks, don't we guys?'

'Yeah, way to go, Tiffs,' says Delroy. Emily joins in the a wave of approval until she sees the artist look at her. Then she falls silent, embarrassed.

'So, guys...' Marie pauses for dramatic effect, her hands now still, palms outward. 'What we've actually all been waiting for, yeah? Prepare to see some truly wicked new lines that will be shipping very, very soon.'

She leans forward and prods a chubby finger at the keyboard, in the process revealing a view of her cleavage that the artist would rather not have seen. He instinctively looks away, up to the next slide that now fills the wall behind her. The images are of half a dozen household items, recognisable rip-offs of well known-brands, but with enough subtle design differences to deter all but the most determined copyright lawyers. This is Subhash's greatest strength. His _modus operandi_ is to track down the original manufacturers of the original items – usually in Guangdong or Taiwan – and get them to re-use as much as they can to produce look-alike products for him. The same production lines, tooling and staff that produce the original products by day are used to make similar items for Subhash at night. They also throw in some of the quality rejects from the day shift. All so that British consumers can save a few bob at the time of purchase and then spend hours on the phone later complaining about the crap quality....

The artist sighs and returns to his drawing. He regrets the mouse ears now. Squinting at the paper he wonders if he might be able to incorporate them, perhaps, into some pleasant pastoral landscape to set off the sparkle in her eye...

'But it seems that we don't all want to be prepared to support these exciting new products.'

The icy tone in Marie's voice cuts into his consciousness and, without looking up, he knows that all eyes are on him.

'These are important new products that we all need to take on board, and I have _personally_ put a lot of time and trouble into preparing these slides to introduce them to you, but it seems that some of us have got more interesting things to do.'

He keeps his head down, but swivels his eyeballs round to take in the faces that are all turned towards him.

'Perhaps, if it's so important, we should all know about it? Yeah?'

There is menace in her voice and he folds the sheets protectively and moves to shove them back in his pocket. But he is too slow. Delroy strikes like a snake to snatch them from his hand. He glances, sneers and passes the drawings to Marie, whose lip curls as she inspects her own portrait.

'Got a taste for Indian dancing now, have we? Don't quite see what this has got to do with our new product range, though.' Has she recognised herself? He decides she has, from the way she screws up the paper and lobs it at the bin in the corner. It misses, and Tiffany dutifully leaps up to rescue it and just pop it in the bin. Tiffany's always just popping. Just popping out for a sec, just popping you through security, just popping you on hold for a minute...

As Marie examines the second picture a sly smile passes across her face. It makes him shudder.

'Well, I don't know what to make of this one,' she says slowly. 'Who on earth could this possibly be meant to be? What do you think, Tiffs?'

Tiffany takes it and suppresses a giggle. Marie encourages her to pass it on. The sketch goes around the table and each team member smirks or laughs openly, pointedly not looking at Emily. Finally Delroy, with some relish, passes the drawing over to Emily herself.

At first she is mystified. Grooves appear in her forehead and a little triangle forms at the top of her nose. Her eyes move around the picture – the artist sees how they flit from the face to the ears and back. There is a tiny quiver in her lower lip then her mouth sets in a fixed smile. Is that still the projector light catching her eye, or is there a drop of moisture there?

Emily takes a deep breath, then speaks. 'I think it's quite a sweet drawing.'

As rebellions go, it's not up there with Tahrir Square or the Bolshevik revolution, but Emily's refusal to play Marie's game generates a frisson of silence. A tiny chink opens up in the team leader's normally unwavering self-confidence. The artist glances across and this time Emily does not look away. Instead a tiny beginning of a smile touches the corners of her mouth. It is the artist who looks away, confused.

But the indomitable Marie recovers and resumes her gaudy slideshow, hand-flip-chops and sing-song enunciation. The artist deems it prudent to at least appear to pay attention, and with an effort of will forces his gaze on to the projected image. But he does not focus on the garish images and trite words. He is mesmerised by the intricate patterns of interference generated by the tiny pixels thrown onto the wall's rough surface, constantly sliding and gliding as the projector is trembled by its cooling fan. Tiny patterns of light shift in a glorious kaleidoscope, like tiny ripples in a smooth lake on a sunny day, prove that beauty is incidental in the most tedious and prosaic circumstance.

And so the artist survives until, finally, gloriously, Marie brings her presentation to its mind-numbing, merciful conclusion. He lets out a sigh, which is received by a stolen smile of empathy from Emily, and a swivel-headed dirty look from Delroy. But something's not right. Marie hasn't bustled out of the room. She's still standing there, raising one hand, palm towards them, her head nodding with a smirky smile snuggling between smug points of hair.

'Whoa, hold up guys! Just, before we go, there's one final thing I want to say. Or perhaps some of you already know?' Nods and sycophantic grins around the table suggest they do. 'It's my birthday! Whoopee!'

She punches the air and wiggles her hips, setting off wobbles of seismic after-shock through her body.

'Yeah, way to go!' enthuses Delroy.

'Brill!' popped in Tiffany.

'So I trust you guys are all up to join me for a quick one after work?'

The artist closes his eyes. It's phrased like a question but it sounds like a command. 'So, all up for it, yeah?'

All heads around the table nod enthusiastically and glance at each other for confirmation. All eyes settle on him, as he sits motionless in his corner. Off the top of his head, he can think of four good reasons not to join them. Firstly, he can see absolutely no reason to celebrate the anniversary of this creature's entry into the world. The only remotely appropriate celebration he can conceive of is to raise a glass in anticipation of her departure from it. If we could only have certain knowledge of the date of our departure from this world, then we might well celebrate deathdays instead of birthdays, counting down the years instead of counting up. Marie is surely past her fiftieth deathday, perhaps even approaching her fortieth...

Secondly, he's quite clear about the terms of the deal he's struck with this particular devil. He endures the company of these people during work hours in return for money. End of. He might be prepared to go down the pub with them if he could book the hours, preferably at over-time rates, but somehow he can't see Marie approving this on his on-line timesheet. Anyway, there wasn't an activity in the drop-down list for 'getting bored and pissed with a bunch of moronic philistines'.

Thirdly, there's the question of rounds. Not so subtle pressure being applied to get him to dig into his pocket to pay for their poncey cocktails and exotic, fruit-enhanced foreign beers. One round for this lot would wipe out more than half of his day's pay. Two tubes of oils lost forever.

Of course, he couldn't reasonably use any of these reasons to excuse himself but, fortunately, today he also has a get-out-of-jail-free card. Gwen. He distorts his face into as passable an impression of apologetic regret as he can manage and says, 'I'm really sorry, I'd love to, but I've got someone coming round tonight.'

Marie's laser-beam eyes narrow, scanning his face for confirmation of a lie. His smile is serene, comfortable in the knowledge that it is the truth. But Emily is watching him too and suddenly, for no reason that he can think of, he hears himself adding, 'just an old friend, that's all.'

Marie raises her palm again. 'All right, no need for detail. You're perfectly entitled to a private life.' She makes it sound like she's granting him an indulgence. 'I'm sure we'll all manage to have a great time without you, won't we guys? So, what are we waiting for? Let's go!'

And they are gone, amid an animated discussion about where to go and what to drink and how bladdered they'll get. But Emily hangs back. The artist, embarrassed, tries to slip away out of the door but gets tangled up with the chair that Delroy has left tipped back against the wall. By the time he breaks free, Emily is blocking the doorway. She's still holding the picture, and chews her lip as she looks down at it.

The artist spreads his hands out. 'Look, Emily, about the drawing...'

She looks up and he is silenced. She doesn't appear angry, and he is not even sure she is sad. She seems to be struggling to find the right word to say.

'It's wonderful.'

'What?'

She smiles and looks at it again. 'You've made me look so...so nice. I know I'm not like that, really, but when I look at this, it makes me feel so... so good about myself. Can I keep it?'

He blinks. 'Er... sure.'

She hugs the scrap of paper to her chest, and whispers now, 'thank you.'

He feels a strange urge to hug her, but not to fuck her. It's an odd feeling.

'But,' he struggles for the words. 'What about... what about the...'

'You mean, the ears?'

He nods. Amazingly, she's still smiling. She looks fondly back at the drawing. 'They're just a doodle, I know you doodle when you get bored. They don't matter, see?' She folds down the corners of paper and the ears disappear. 'See? All gone.'

He takes the picture. It is of a very pretty girl and yet at the same time it is of Emily, which is odd. He feels it is telling him something but he's not sure he wants to hear it so he speaks instead.

'You know, I could draw you. Properly. Like you said earlier. That is, if you still want me to...'

She's looking down again. He can hardly hear her reply. 'Yes, I'd like that.'

'Good. Then we'll do it. Sometime.'

And then there is the silence of a line crossed, neither of them knowing how to go forward, but both are sure they cannot go back.

'Yeah. Sometime.'

'Yeah.'

And she's gone, trotting off after the birthday party. He almost wishes he was joining them, after all...

'God, that's good.'

He pushes his head back deeper into the pillow and blows smoke up at the ceiling. 'What is? My fantastic painting or my awesome fucking technique?'

Gwen has a leg draped over his, and one hand is exploring the curls of hair at the base of his belly. 'Both, you arrogant, conceited talented shit.' She bites his ear-lobe, hard.

'Ow. Vicious cow.'

'No more than you deserve. Anyway, who's Emily?'

His body stiffens slightly. He knows she's sensed it and wishes she hasn't. 'Emily who? Why do you ask?'

'You called out her name.'

'Oh, did I? No, I don't think so.'

'You did. Who is she? Is she nice? Is she your age?'

'Yeah. Sort of.'

'Good. It's about time you found someone of your age to hang around with.'

She sits up again and contemplates the painting at the foot of the bed.

'You know, you're going to have a problem once the rest of the world wakes up to your talent.'

'What's that then? How to spend all the millions they'll pay me for my master-pieces?'

'No, producing enough master-pieces to earn millions. You know, that's only the second decent canvas I've seen from you this year.'

He stubs out his ciggie in an empty wine glass. 'Tell me about it. God, if I could just get time to do more work, instead of pissing away all my time in that place...'

'Yeah, maybe baby. You know, what I really love about this piece is it just contains all human existence. God, those blue boxes are so sinister and as for those creatures they morph into – what are they, Indian gods or something? – there's real despair there. And these red streaks that almost seem to, I don't know, sneer at you in some way. Yet you still manage to offer hope. These little creatures at the bottom, they're delightful. What are they? Mice?'

'Dunno, really,' he says, 'they're just... what they are.'

'Whatever. They're really cute.'

'Cute. Yeah.'

'You know, I was speaking to a dealer the other day, he's a place in Dover Street. He's interested in you. I reckon I could talk him into giving you an exhibition if you could pull together another four or five canvasses like this.'

'Oh, right. Great.' He tries to be cool, to keep his voice level as he sits up and rolls another fag. Gwen moves up close to inspect the canvas and puts a finger out towards it.

'Don't touch. I only did that this evening, just before you came.'

'Yes, I can smell that. You know, it's amazing how much rage you can pack in to just a few square inches. You pack in so much paint, too.'

'Yeah, at twenty quid a tube.'

Gwen turns and tilts her head. 'Is that a big issue for you? I mean, the price of materials?'

He shrugs. 'They cost what they cost. No point fretting about it.'

'Have you ever thought about... maybe being a little less... extravagant with it?'

His hand with the unlit fag stops half-way to his mouth and he looks at her, gob-smacked.

'Yeah, that's a great idea. Why didn't I think of that? Sure, then there's probably all sorts of ways I could save money. I could do smaller pictures. On cardboard or paper, too, that could save money. I could take up _water-fucking-colours_. Even better, I could go all _objets trouvés_ and glue sea-shells and driftwood together. No! Why waste money on a trip to the beach? I could do the whole fucking Turner Prize trip and just stick my own shit on it. What a fool I've been all these years! Working on my own art in my own way, pissing away all that money, when I could have been copying other shit work for a fraction of the dosh!'

Gwen laughs. 'Thank God for that.'

'What?'

'You've not lost the anger. I was worried for a moment.'

'Worried?'

'That you'd go all soft, now you've fallen in love.'

His jaw sags. He feels truly lost.

'Fallen in love? Who the hell with? And what do you know about it?'

Gwen smiles and turns back to the canvas. 'I think it adds a new dimension. But seriously, you need to work at it more. If you want to succeed.'

'You know, I'd only need a few quid a week for, like, materials and stuff. Then I could ditch that shit phone drone job and I could really get on with work.'

Gwen didn't react.

'You know about the bloke who was painting that actress woman, Mademoiselle Guimard's wall, don't you?'

'Of course,' Gwen replies drily. 'I seem to remember teaching you about them some time ago.'

'Yeah, about how she saw he was so miserable, and she asked him what's up and he said he wanted to be an artist and he'd won a place at the French Academy in Rome but couldn't afford to go...'

He pauses, but gets no reaction. So he ploughs on.

'So she can't bear to see him all miserable, and tells him to stop painting her wall and says she'll pay for him to study. And then he went on to become...'

'Jacques-Louis David. Yes, I know.'

He runs a finger down her spine. 'I mean, it would be like an investment wouldn't it? If someone lobbed me a few quid, I could move out of town and find some dirt cheap shack in the country to live in, and then really work. Twenty-four seven. I'd be a one-man art factory, churning out canvases for your Dover Street mates to flog on as the latest best thing, I'd soon be able to pay you back...'

'No.'

'But Gwen, you believe in me, don't you?'

'That's not the point.'

'And it's not as if you short of brass, with that husband of yours and his precious city job...'

She stands up and reaches for her top. He trails off. They do not discuss Gwen's husband.

She told him about Gerald, once, right at the start of their relationship, and then made it clear the subject was closed. She and Gerald have a perfectly workable marriage. She's his glamorous "bohemian muse" who brings a bit of edginess into his colourless life. They married at a time when most of his colleagues' idea of reckless was wearing a Mickey Mouse tie to the office party. Their life has now settled into a contented pattern where they happily enjoy their evenings apart, both in the company of other men. He looks for fucking great deals, she deals in great fucking.

She turns back and sighs. 'Don't go there, baby. It isn't going to happen.'

He pouts. 'God, you just don't get it, do you? Look at that canvas, see what I can do when I only get the chance. Just think how much more work I could get done if I didn't have to earn money!'

She looks at the painting again, feeling his soul jump out from the canvas as vividly as his body jumped on her just a few minutes earlier. The slashes and gashes told his story in a way his words never could. It's the anger and rage and lust that reach out to overwhelm her senses. She closes her eyes and tries to imagine what effect a painting born of his contentment, of happy days under a cloudless sky, might have. If any.

She smiles and shakes her head. The ghastly lime green alarm clock – why does he keep that thing? – tells her its half seven. She reaches into her bag to pull out a clean, crisp fifty pound note.

'I've got to go – some dreary city dinner I'm supposed to be brightening up a bit. Take this, and go and get yourself another canvas and some paints. I think you're ready to get back to work.'

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# Price, value and hunger

From the Burning Issues blog on my website. Posted 1 September.

Spinny and I recently had cause to pause briefly at a motorway service station, a tiny brush with the absurdities of everyday reality that makes us appreciate even more the simplicities of cave life. There our collective eyes were caught by a display of chilled drinks where, side by side, bottles of milk and mineral water told their own, sad story of madness in the modern world. A litre bottle of milk was priced at 99p, but the same amount of water cost £2.10.

How did it come to this? When did we so lose touch with the true value of things that this monstrous juxtapostion passes unnoticed, or uncared for, by millions of people every day? How must farmers feel when, weary from their day's labour of caring for their herds, they realise they could simply fill up bottles at the tap and see them sell for twice the price? What do our children learn in a world where is more value in a trendy shaped bottle and flashy label than in a nutritious natural product? What are the rapacious retail chain buyers thinking as they beat down the price paid to farmers, claiming to want to offer the cheapest product to their customers while simultaneously planning to bleed their travel-weary and thirsty customers dry?

And what are we doing, when we dig into our pockets and put up with this nonsense? Does a couple of hours behind the wheel make us so thirsty don't even glance at the price of the stuff we buy? Or have we just allowed ourselves to be so far removed from reality that we just don't realise what's going on? What stops us all, each and every one of us, grab the manager of the store in question and shout in his or her face, "do you think I'm really that stupid?"

But that would be unfair to the managers who are, just doing their jobs, probably for a pittance and just as much victims of the whole thing as the rest of us. And anyway, the well-heeled travellers passing along Britain's motorways don't suffer that much the food scandal that's gripping the globe. The real victims are those for whom a price increase of a few pennies on basic food items means the difference between survival and starving. Those who have recently seen global food prices climbing relentlessly to an all-time high.

And the real villains? They are the global firms who play on our ignorance to manipulate the global food prices to maximise their own profits. Who claim "market forces" demand that hungry African farmers produce food to export to wealthy western markets, where a third of it will probably go to waste. They are trading companies like Glencore who describe the global food crisis and price rises as a "good business opportunity". They are banks like Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley who make billions from speculating on (also known as "manipulating the price of") food staples around the world. And as along as we allow them, they will continue to do so.

Spinny and I didn't berate the manager of the store. Instead we turned sadly back and went out into the glorious English summer. After the short hike across the car park through the driving rain, I took off my sodden jacket and squeezed out the water. About a fiver's worth, I reckoned. Nice business.

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# Universe in reverse

From the Philosophical Engineer blog on the IET's Engineering & Technology Magazine website. Posted 6 October.

I used to think of patent law, if I thought of it at all, as a dry and dusty business. Lawsuits that led to lengthy and arcane arguments over design minutiae, becoming wars of attrition to be settled by mutual consent before all concerned could lose the will to live. But now it seems the intellectual property (IP) business has grown into an industry all of its own, and a colourful one at that. The news pages are filled with the latest reports on Apple, Google and Samsung battling it out for billion dollar settlements, or attempting to get each others' products banned. It seems that even the great Steve Jobs was seriously side-tracked from his mission of driving through fantastic product innovation by the fear of his work being _"[expletive deleted] ripped off"_ by Google's Android system, and vowed to " _spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong"._

The aim of IP law is to prevent the copying of products, which is effectively the theft of a company's R&D effort, and IP legislation covers not just the copying itself, but also techniques used in the process of copying. One such technique is reverse engineering, which essentially involves running the normal development lifecycle in reverse to derive the original design spec. This method of opening up a product's design is so powerful in uncovering its design approach that it is considered an infringement of the author's rights. Nonetheless, some forms of reverse engineering are permitted, for example when we need to understand the product's design for the purpose of maintaining the product or other systems that need to interwork with it. Reverse engineering is sometimes vital to understand the environment in which a product or system is to work.

In some ways, we might say that all our investigations into the natural world could be described as reverse engineering. We find ourselves living in this fantastically complex universe, to which we bring all our intellectual powers to bear in decoding, cataloguing its features and trying to work out what its underlying design might look like.

But there is one big difference between reverse engineering a product and the universe itself. With a product, we are generally helped in working out _what_ it does and _how_ it does it, by knowing _why_ it does it. In other words, knowing the purpose for which a product is designed helps us make little intuitive leaps into the mind of the designer. For example, consider the behaviour of my iPhone when I enter a wrong password. Instead of emitting a clunky noise and displaying a tedious "error message" that I have to tap to clear, the password entry box simply vibrates a little, as if shaking its little head in sorrow, a delightfully gentle reprimand for my error. But, of course, to understand why this little feature is so effective one needs to know the negative connotations of head shaking in Western cultures. Perhaps it's not so effective in other cultures where this gesture has different meanings - can anyone comment on that?

But when it comes to the universe, we have no such clues to what may lie behind the design. In fact, scientists are discouraged from asking the question _why?_ , and have been since the foundations of the scientific method were laid out by Francis Bacon in his _Novum Organum_. The question of purpose is considered beyond the ability of humans to judge, and therefore outside of science. Instead it is banished to the realm of philosophy where it may safely be debated under the name of "teleology".

Well, that's the theory, at least, but it's still common to find even the most hardened scientists still using teleological arguments from time to time. This is especially so in evolutionary biology, where the simplest way explaining the complicated, random process of natural selection often involves attributing purpose. How often do we hear nature commentators assert that "this bird evolved a long beak so it can reach insects in a tree," or "humans evolved opposing thumbs to allow us to manipulate objects"?

Still, on the whole, we engineers and scientists managed to get on just fine without worrying about whether there's an overall purpose for the universe or not. Even if there is, it doesn't seem to make any difference to our daily lives. People who have strong feelings that there is such a purpose work alongside colleagues who feel equally strongly that there isn't, but in general it doesn't affect the way we do our jobs together. If there is a purpose, its effect must be too subtle to be noticed on a daily basis. Perhaps purpose runs through existence like the grain in wood - we can cut it either way, but it's a lot easier to work with the grain than against it. Or perhaps its like gravity waves, shaping the universe but virtually undetectable without the most sensitive apparatus. Who know?

Meanwhile we get on with our great project of reverse engineering the universe, breaking things apart to see how they tick. We even doing a bit of copying along the way. Hardly a day goes by without a new story on how we're "recreating" some feature of the universe: the LHC recreates the state of the universe at the Big Bang, ITER will reproduce the sun on earth, the latest computer chip will recreate the workings of the brain, interactive maps recreate the surface of our planet, and so on.

Which perhaps raises another question: if the universe _was_ designed by an intelligent agent, are we infringing his/her/its intellectual property rights when we recreate its properties here on earth? Are we setting ourselves up for some massive cosmic IP law suit? Now that's a patently tricky thought.

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# Shadow killer

Short story. A young woman returns home to find the body of her boyfriend. The police seem more interested in questioning her than looking for the murderer.

The smell hits as soon as I open the front door. It brings memories of long ago, comforting memories, a warm place, Mum holding my hand as I kick up saw-dust. I put my bag on the hallway table, as usual, and something catches my eye through the living room doorway. The coffee table's at a funny angle, it's been knocked over. I frown as I hang up the damp raincoat and cross to the living room. Rabbits hanging from hooks, turkeys at Christmas time, the comforting smell of the old butchers. Through the doorway now, the coffee table's smashed, just one corner sticking up at a crazy angle on the last intact leg. My heart pounds. I step over the magazines scattered over the floor, look around. A leg, motionless, sticks out from behind the sofa. I stop dead and do a stupid girlie thing of putting my hand to my mouth, afraid to go on. A thick, spreading stain on the carpet. Blood. Like blood from the butcher's counter, soaking into saw-dust. Only this blood is seeping from Simon into our carpet.

Behind the sofa, his body spreadeagles, limbs at crazy angles, a hand stretched out towards the window. I panic, my breath won't come and I think I'll be sick, or pass out, or both. I should do something. What is it they do on the telly? Recovery position, kiss of life, thump his chest? But his body is heavy and jammed between the sofa and the wall. I stumble to the hallway, fumble in my bag for the phone and stupidly try to remember whether I ring 999 or 911.

***

They sit me in a windowless room with a blanket round my shoulders and ask me lots of questions in a kind and caring way. A plain clothed man and a uniformed woman. When did I last see him?

'This evening. It was just an hour before... or maybe a bit longer.'

What did I do during that time?

'Walked. Just walked around.'

In the rain?

'I needed to clear my head. We... we'd had a bit of a row. I just wanted to calm down a bit.'

Only now it dawns on me that we never said goodbye, that my last words to him, ever, on this earth were 'see you in hell, you fucker.' Another piece of me crumbles and I dissolve. They pause the interview, refresh the tissue box and bring me sweet tea.

Did I see anything suspicious when I left?

'Like what?'

Someone hanging around?

'No, I don't remember anything at all.'

They asked if I've family close by I can stay with.

'No, my parents live in Derby. Anyway they're away at the moment.'

Anyone local could put you up?

Automatically I suggest Sally and Jim. The nearest thing Simes and I had to friends.

***

Sally's got the spare room all ready. Before we leave the station, the cops bring in a doctor and he gives me some strong pills. I sleep in fits, and have the same dream over and over. I am in our house while it happens. There's someone big and strong, in the shadows, I can't see their face. They lift up the lamp above his head, I grab hold of them and try to stop them but they're too strong. Each time, I wake up just as the lamp comes down towards Simes.

Sally offers me breakfast, though it's nearer lunch time. I take a coffee and wait for the car to take me back to the station. Sally hovers, doesn't know what to say, she keeps trying to talk to me but I say nothing. I've got my hands round the coffee mug and I stare at their wedding picture on the wall. I was her bridesmaid, it was a massive event. Perfect wedding for the perfect couple, no expense spared. Simes is behind us, grinning that big goofy grin of his. We wanted to get married but could never afford it. I feel like throwing the mug at the picture.

They ask tougher questions today, they must think I'm up to it, as if twelve hours of drugged sleep are supposed to get my head sorted. They ask about the row.

'It was just, you know, a normal row that every couple has. About nothing and everything. I don't remember how it started, maybe about what we'd watch on the telly. Then it turned into the usual stuff about money, holidays, moving into a bigger place, may be starting a...'

'Starting a what?' asks the policewoman.

The word 'family' is in my mouth but it won't come out, I try to force it and just end up spraying the poor woman with spit and snot instead.

After another tea break they take a different tack. Was Simon in any kind of trouble? Had he been mixing with any new acquaintances recently?

'Not as far as I know.' And I would have known. We were close.

They ask more questions about the house. Did anyone else have a key? Had we noticed anyone hanging around in the days before? Any suspicious callers?

I answer but they see me getting more exhausted and take me back to Sally's. A smell of beef stew fills the flat and I nearly gag. Sally says she's got something ready for me, I can have it whenever I like, I really should eat something. Jim is there – he's just returned from some business trip or something – but he's hanging back, embarrassed, miserable, unsure what to say. As always. Not like Simes. He'll be like a lost puppy now, without his old school chum. I take a couple of biscuits and a cup of tea and head for my bedroom. More broken sleep, more dreams.

Back at the station in the morning and the mood has changed. The kindly policewoman isn't there and instead there's a young bloke with a smooth head and glasses. He's introduced to me as a psychologist, which freaks me out slightly.

Then the police sergeant starts out with that 'you don't have to say anything, but anything you do say...' business which freaks me out totally.

'Are you arresting me? You think I did it?' I hear a voice shriek.

'Calm down now, please. No, we're not arresting you or charging you.'

'Then what? Why are you pissing around here with me, when you should be out catching the bastard who killed my Simes?'

They bring me back down. They tell me it's nothing to worry about, all routine, nothing ruled in or out of their inquiries at this stage. They have a team out and about looking for the killer and they're sure they'll get to the bottom of it. Soon.

They start on again about what happened that night. This time I'm wary. Anything I say might be taken down and used in evidence...

'How was Simon the last time you saw him?'

I try to think back, but there are blurs. The shrink says not to worry, there are often memory lapses after a big shock. The mind's way of dealing with things, blot out the memories until it's in a fit state to handle them.

I tell them all I can remember. Yes, it had been a fairly heated argument. Yes, maybe things got broken. They tell me they found shards of crockery in the kitchen, a mark on the wall where it looks a plate has hit. The neighbours – nosey bastards, they are – report hearing sounds of a domestic dispute. But all I remember is slamming the door, straight after delivering my one-liner. I made sure the last word was mine, as always. Fucker. That was my last word. I'm snivelling again now and they have to wait.

'He was in an upset condition when you left?'

'What do you think?'

'Where was he? Standing? Sitting? In the kitchen or the living room?'

I'd left him in the living room. That's where he'd brought up my parents again, banging on about them going off on cruises while we struggled to pay off two student loans, plus mortgage, plus credit cards... But it's nothing to do with my parents, is it? And what they do is absolutely nothing to do with him...

I go out that evening, alone. I can't stand the silences and the all-round awkwardness at Sally's place. I walk the streets and think, and think some more. The shrink said that bits of memory would come back to me over time, they might help them with their inquiries. I ask myself, over and over, who could have done it? Simes had no enemies, kept himself out of trouble, at least as far as I knew. I think back over what's happened today and the copper reading out that caution and the thought fills my head - will they just try to pin it on me? Maybe it's just a quick clear up they're after, and anyone will do, even poor wifey, no alibi no defence no nothing. With all the cut-backs you hear about, maybe they're not even looking for anyone else. I shudder and pull my coat closer around me. It's up to me. I have to do something.

Murderers always return to the scene of the crime - that's what they say, isn't it? The idea takes root and I stumble back to our little cul-de-sac, two short lines of red-brick terraces and a turning circle at the end, the close that I'd never be able to call home again. I expect to find a copper outside, with all that blue and white tape they were putting up when I was led away that evening. But there's nothing but a couple of bunches of flowers, they've all gone, shut up shop. The house is quiet, the curtains closed. I walk past, head down, in case anyone sees me. The last thing I need is bloody nosy neighbours wanting a piece of me, offering fake consolations while digging for dirt, then blabbing to the papers, all that 'quiet couple kept themselves to themselves' gob-shite.

At the end of the street there's a narrow footpath running off between two houses. I take up a position at the end of it, leaning against a wall so that I can keep an eye, unseen, on the cul-de-sac. And I wait. The murderer always return to the scene of the crime. And I've got all the time in the world.

Life goes on. Cars arrive and drive off, the old girl on the corner shambles back with her Asda shopping bags, the nosy neighbours go out to their bingo or whatever they do. A steady stream of traffic passes the end of the close: cars, vans and pedestrians. Normality creeps back into the street like the desert sands.

But then there's the bloke in the hoodie. At first he's crossing the road as if to go right on past but he pauses, looks around and changes course. He wanders up to the house. My heart beats faster. He looks around again and goes up the path. He cuts across the flower bed and presses his nose against the glass of the living room window. There's a gap in the curtain because we couldn't afford all the material to do a proper job. He stands there for a minute or so, just peering in. Then he heads off.

The bastard!

As I follow him, I think, should I call the cops? Tell them I've done their job for them? But would I actually say? That I saw some yob peering through our window. No, I need to find out more.

He turns right into the main road and there are more people so I get closer to keep him in view. He's skinny and the jeans under his hoodie are sagging off his arse, he slouches along with hands in his jacket pockets. At the canal bridge he takes the stone steps down to the tow path. It's quiet and I drop back, just hoping he doesn't look back and see me. Just before the next bridge is the Lockkeeper pub. He nods at a couple of blokes in biker jackets smoking by the door as he goes in.

I stop and try to control my breathing. He's trapped, I have him now, like a wasp under a glass. I think of calling the cops, but my curiosity is stronger.

Ignoring the leather clad leers I enter the pub, a man's place where the stink of stale beer, sweat and testosterone are like a slap in the face and the sound of Motorhead assaults my ears. Hoodie is in the corner, just sitting down at table with some big bloke and a couple of other lads. They're relaxed and laughing, don't even notice me.

I take a position at the bar where I can keep an eye on them and the door, and order a half of lager. They're still mucking around. The old man is clearly their leader, the others sucking up to him, when he opens his mouth, they listen. He's the boss, he calls the shots. Maybe he gives the orders to Hoodie.

'Hello, Love. You alone? You're glass is empty, want another?'

I didn't see him creep up on me. He's bearded, beer-bellied and shorter than me. I look him up and down and curl my lip.

'No.'

'You sure? You look lonely to me. We could...'

I really can't take this shit right now. 'Piss off, you little fucker, before I lay one on you.'

He's startled, like a rabbit, and backs off.

'All right, no offence meant. I only...' and he's gone, back under the stone he crawled out of. But I realise I missed a trick. What I need is information, someone local to talk to. I order another lager and wait.

The next punter is taller, clean-shaven and wearing a black tee-shirt. His breath stinks of beer.

'Hi. Haven't seen you here before.'

'Maybe that's because I've never been here before.'

I meet his eye, he smiles, gets drinks and starts the old routine.

'So, what brings you here then?'

'Oh, you know, just fancied a change. So, this is your local, eh?'

He looks around as if he owns the place. 'You could say that. This place has taken about half of everything I've earned since I was sixteen. Probably could have bought the place, by now.' He laughs at his own joke.

I smile. 'So you know all the regulars then?' I nod towards Hoodie's table. 'Know them?'

He glances round, then swings back to me, putting his head closer to mine than I'm comfortable with.

'You don't want to get mixed with them,' he stage whispers.

My mouth dries and I have to take a drink before I can speak again.

'Why not? Who are they?'

He looks around again, then grins. 'That's the local bookie. Runs the place just down the road. Thieving crooked bastard.' He finishes his pint. 'That's where the other half of my wages have gone, so reckon I own him, as well.'

But I've stopped listening to him, I'm piecing it together. Light begins to dawn. Simon was always banging on about money. A story unfolds, featuring a crooked bookmaker, debts out of control...

'So, do you have plans for the rest of the evening?'

The loser in the tee-shirt has given me what I wanted, time to move on. I sum him up, I don't want a scene, to attract attention. I reckon he's had two or three beers, his bladder must be pretty full.

'Not really,' I give him the eye. 'But I don't fancy staying here. Know anywhere nice to move on to?'

His eyes light up. 'Yeah, reckon I do at that. Just hold on one minute, and we'll clear out of this place, eh?'

He finishes his beer, clumps the glass on the bar and swaggers towards the gents. I'm out of the door and on the tow-path before he's opened his zip.

***

Sally fusses round like an old hen, asking what I'm doing, can she help. I tell her to just leave me alone. I log into Simon's bank account. It's easy to guess the password, it's the same one he uses for all his accounts - my name and birthdate. I scrutinise the entries, looking for tell-tale signs. Nothing obvious there, but then Simon was probably too clever to leave a trail. He probably just took cash out in lots of small amounts. I check his phone bill, too, but he's probably too clever for that, he knows how to withhold his number. Sally's still hanging around, demanding to know where I've been and what I've been doing. She sniffs and smells the pub on me. I go to my room and slam the door.

***

The betting shop's like the pub, stinking of men and sweat, just missing the beer. Men hang around under huge telly screens, scratching their arses and yawning. My heart leaps as I see Hoodie behind the barred counter. He looks at me, curious, but doesn't recognise me. Why should he? I take a deep breath and approach.

'What can I do for you, Love?'

'I want to place a bet. On a horse.'

He grins on the side of his face and pushes a hand back through his hair. He's got acne, maybe he's still only a teenager.

'Well, you're in the right place for that. Any particular horse?'

He's taking the piss and a bloke leaning against the wall beside me laughs. I look up at the display screen above his head and read from it.

'Yeah, Mother's Ruin.'

He turns to look at the display himself.

'Right you are. Mother's Ruin in the three-thirty at Sandown. How much?'

His voice is that of a boy and I can hardly believe that a lowlife like this could have taken my Simes's life. I swallow hard and keep my cool.

'Ten quid.'

He taps on the computer system hidden below the counter. 'Each way or on the nose?'

'What?'

'Win or place?'

'Er, win.' I've no idea what he's on about. He's such a scrawny runt, it's hard to picture him lifting up the heavy lamp base, bringing it down on Simon's head. He's not like my dream, at all.

'Right, that'll be ten quid, please, Love.'

The git beside me laughs again as I scrabble in my purse for the money. My hands are shaking. He pushes me a slip of paper and I take it and stand there, looking at him, the man – no, the boy – who murdered my boyfriend.

'Come on, Darling, get a move on,' says a voice behind me. There's a queue. I stand to one side, clutching the slip of paper, watching Hoodie serve the regulars swiftly and efficiently, in that unfamiliar language. A door opens behind him and Fattie appears, looking around. His eyes fall on me and he looks me up and down, then disappears where he came from.

These are the bastards who killed Simes, I keep telling myself. But what to do about it? Have I enough to tell the cops, yet? I decide I can get more information, myself. I hang around under the screens as they show the race, the excited commentator reaching his climax, cheers and groans around me. I develop my plan.

'Tough luck, Love. Maybe try an each way next time?'

Hoodie is talking to me. The screens say Mother's Ruin came in second. I stiffen up and go back to the counter. Time to start the plan. I force a smile.

'God, I'm such a girlie when it comes to all this. I wish I knew more about it.'

Hoodie does his lop-sided smile. 'You'll pick it up, Love. In time. Perhaps with a bit of guidance.'

I lean into the counter. 'Go on, then. I'll have one of those each ways.' I glance up. 'Betchalife in the three fifty at Chepstow.' I'm picking up the lingo.

'So, you're first time, eh?' he asks, pushing me the slip. His fingers linger on it as I try to take it.

'Gotta be a first time for everything, eh?'

'So you want to find out more about it?'

'You gonna teach me?'

He licks his lips. 'Can do. If you want.'

I toss my hair. 'What time do you finish here?'

Now his eyes are popping. God, he must think it's Christmas, his birthday and Easter rolled into one.

'Six.'

'OK. I'll be back at six. You can buy me a drink and tell me all about it.'

***

I say I know a good place to go to and lead him across town through the back streets, past my place. As we approach the cul-de-sac I try to keep my pace even while I keep a close eye on him for any reaction.

He nods towards my house. 'Bad do there the other day. D'you hear about it?'

I bite my lip and nod.

'Ain't safe nowhere these days, eh?'

Is that it? Is that all the little murderous bastard can say?

We reach the wine bar where he's clearly not comfortable. I take a table near the door and get him to order a bottle of cabernet sauvignon. He squirms as he mumbles the unfamiliar words. When it arrives, he pours two large glasses and knocks his back like it was later. I sip mine, and begin to question him.

'So is it all cash there, or could I open an account? You know, for telephone bets and stuff?'

He's relaxed now, on familiar territory. 'Sure, Danny – that's the boss – gives credit lines. But only to people he knows, of course. Once you're a regular, no problem.'

I string him along a bit more, until he's well into his second glass, then I toss in the question, casually.

'Do customers ever get into trouble? You know, big debts they can't pay?'

He grins. 'Not if Danny can help it. But yeah, sometimes it happens.'

I take a drink and speak into the glass, hiding my face. 'And what happens then? I suppose he sends round the boys, yeah?'

Hoodie grins. 'That's right. With big baseball bats.'

I almost drop the glass. I can hardly believe he's going to confess, so soon. I hang onto the glass and try to control my face.

But suddenly, he's laughing.

'No, only joking.' He takes a long swig. 'We use an agency, all legit and above board. Have to be these days. Otherwise punters can sue us, you know, for harassment and stuff.'

He's clamming up, backtracking. Maybe he's guessed I'm onto him. Maybe he thinks I'm a copper! No matter, I reckon I've got enough. I pull the old toilet trick again, leaving him with the bill for the cab sauv, and on the way back to Sally's I plan what I'm going to tell the cops tomorrow.

***

Sally is waiting for me, her face all contorted with worry. Worry isn't something she normally does, she and Jim don't have much to worry about.

'God, where have you been? The police have called and been around twice, we've been calling your mobile all day.'

I pull it out of my bag and inspect it. 'The battery's dead.'

She seems to relax a little. 'Of course, Sweetie. I understand. I suppose charging your phone isn't exactly the top of you priorities just now. But where have you been?'

God, she's like Simes! Always needs to know, to be in control.

I mutter, 'just about, you know, thinking and walking.'

'Anyway, bottom line is, they'd like to see you again, tomorrow. They'll pick you up at ten. And the victim support people rang, they want to see you.'

'Bottom line.' She always has to use this pseudo-business jargon, just to remind me about the highflyer jobs she and Jim have got. As if I could forget. I grit my teeth.

'Fine. I want to see them, too.'

She looks at me funny, now. 'Are you sure you're all right?'

Why does she keep asking me that? My boyfriend's been murdered, the cops reckon it was me, I've been out doing their bloody job for them and hanging around with the worst scum and pond-life this town can throw up.

'Of course I'm not fucking all right!'

Sally's shocked, but she forces a smile and reaches out a hand towards my arm. I pull back. I just can't take any more of this.

'Don't fucking touch me. Nobody lays a finger on me. Nobody!'

It's all slipping away from me again. She's coming closer and closer, making sounds that I can't hear above the buzzing in my ears. I see a hand reach out and grab the desk-lamp, lifting it into the air. Now Sally backs away. I follow her. She hits the wall and she crouches down, her hands over her head.

Now I see the figure from my dreams again, hand raised, above Sally's head, about to strike. Like in the dream I reach out to stop it. Only this time, I realise I can. I am stronger than it. The arm gripping the lamp is mine. It comes back down, slowly, to my side. The mist clears, the buzzing quiets. I hear Sally whimpering.

But I see Simon. I see his face, sneering. And I hear again the last words he would ever utter.

'Go on then. You wouldn't dare.'

'Oh God,' I say, as I the lamp and crashes on the floor beside me. 'Oh God.'

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# Other philosophical engineers (or engineering philosophers?)

From the Philosophical Engineer blog on the IET's Engineering & Technology Magazine website. Posted 25 October.

In this blog we've seen some ideas that show there's not such a gap between philosophy and engineering as we might think. Now let's meet some extraordinary characters who embody the same notion. In the time honoured fashion, in reverse order, let me present my personal Top Five Engineers who were also Philosophers...

Baruch _aka_ Benedict de Spinoza starts us off at number five. For many, this seventeenth century Dutchman was simply _the_ philosopher. How he explained the universe, and our place in it, was as bold as it was sweeping, taking in physics, religion, psychology, politics and more. His thoughts were so radical they were too dangerous to publish during his lifetime, for fear of retribution by the religious powers that held sway even in Holland, one of the most liberal countries. Among those he influenced are Freud, George Eliot, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. Hegel said, "you are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all" and Einstein even wrote a poem about him! But Spinoza was also a practical man, a polished lens grinder who made

optical devices for Christian Huygens among others. Deeply interested in science, he corresponded frequently with Leibniz, Robert Boyle and other members of the new Royal Society. He immersed himself in the works of Descartes, on which he wrote a commentary, and was clearly fascinated by the emerging theories of motion, allusions to which pepper his works. All right, it's still a bit of stretch to call him an engineer. That's why he's only number five on my list.

Number four is Thomas Paine, a leading figure of the French and American revolutions and a writer who also knew a thing or two about designing bridges... and corsets. A true Enlightenment man, Paine set out his views on human rights in his pamphlet _Common Sense_ , without which, John Adams said, "the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain." Job done in America, Paine headed for France where his defence of their revolution, _The Rights of Man,_ earned him the remarkable privilege of being elected to the French National Convention - despite not speaking French! But in between honing his arguments for rationalism, free thinking and civil rights, Paine also managed to fit in a bit of bridge building. His plan to raise funds to build a bridge over the Thames involved erecting a prototype of his novel all-iron design in a field in London (now Lisson Grove). When funding failed to materialise, this "bridge to nowhere" was dismantled and recycled as the Sunderland Bridge at Wearmouth. It then became the patented model for many subsequent single-span bridges. How much of his bridge engineering skill came from his early career as a corset-maker is a matter of conjecture, but his engineering efforts also included patenting a smokeless candle and developing steam engines.

Ernst Kapp, often referred to as the founder of philosophy of technology, is number three. Forced to leave his native Germany because of his political activities during the volatile 1840s, Herr Kapp settled in Texas where he worked as a farmer, geographer and inventor. Continuing his political activities as president of the abolitionist organization " _Die Freie Verein_ " (The Free Society), he campaigned for such revolutionary causes as equal pay for equal work; abolition of slavery and capital punishment; free education and the separation of church and state. Increasingly fascinated by the relationships between man and technology, how tools and weapons are identified as extensions of our natural organs and social problems associated with the rise of machines, he published in 1877 his ground-breaking " _Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik_ " ("Fundamentals of a Philosophy of Technical Science"). Kapp did not eschew teleology (see: Universe in reverse). For him, human development had a purpose, a progression towards greater self-consciousness leading to our eventual understanding of " _das grosse Geheimnis des Lebens"_ (the big secret of life). But such grand ideas didn't put him above more down to earth speculations. "Dr. Ernest Kapp's Water-Cure," which he offered at a famous spa resort, included a forerunner of aqua-aerobics.

I've made Ludwig Wittgenstein runner-up (which would not please him at all). Wittgenstein attended school with Hitler, studied mechanical engineering, specialised in aeronautical projects and researched kite behaviour in the upper atmosphere at Glossop. He designed his own plane and was awarded a patent for a novel propeller design incorporating small jet engines, so his reputation as an engineer is secure. But after he became obsessed with mathematics and logic and barnstormed his way into Bertrand Russell's office, he went on to produce two of the most influential philosophical works of the twentieth century, _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ and _Philosophical Investigations_. It was his sister who drew him back to engineering when she asked him to help design her new house in Vienna. Such was his attention to detail, it took a year to design the door handles, and another for the radiators, then in one room he insisted on raising the ceiling by 30cm, to give it the proportions he desired. He also invented a special pulley mechanism to raise the metal screens he deigned to go over each window, which was just as well as they weighed 150kg each!

And finally.... topping my list is Pythagoras. All right, purists might raise an eyebrow at my claiming him as an "engineer", but where would we engineers be without him? As for his credentials as a philosopher - well, he invented the word! Pythagoras moved around a lot, studying with Egyptian temple priests, from whom he acquired an obsession with purity, and a reverence for beans (which possibly contributed to his death). He was taken prisoner by the Persians and shipped to Babylon where he adopted the sacred rites of the Magoi priests. Back in Europe he founded an ascetic, secretive and vegetarian brotherhood, dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom. The output from this group was prodigious, Pythagoras himself being credited with many theorems relating to geometric figures and various methods of constructing both plane and solid forms. At the heart of his work was the idea that the entire physical world can be understood through mathematics. His theory of harmonics based on ratios laid the foundations for music theory and practice. But his secret society attracted enemies. Pursued from his native Samos, he settled in Southern Italy until political activities saw him chased out again and his meeting places burnt. Some reports of his death have him killed by an angry mob, but only because he refused to make his escape through a crop of bean plants because he would have trampled them.

So that's my top five philosopher-cum-engineers. Would anyone else like to offer their list?

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# What's so good about rational anyway?

From the Burning Issues blog on my website. Posted 13 March.

Spinoza is often lumped in with a group of roughly contemporary philosophers with the label "rationalist." And he would probably not be unhappy about that. But of course there have been many other philosophical groups and movements since then, some of which have directly challenged rationalism as being the best way of looking at the world. So it is quite reasonable to question why Spinny and I hang on so dearly to the ideas of this particular seventeenth century thinker.

It is because there is something special about rationalism and its place in the story of human development. To us it is the gold standard of human interactions, providing a uniquely powerful tool that allows us to dig into our experiences to enrich our own understanding, and then share what we have discovered with others so that each new researcher can build on the work of their predecessors. In this way we continually add to the store of human knowledge and expand our understanding of both the world around us and ourselves. Rationalism is inclusive and near universal. Rational behaviour transcends cultures and defuses the conflicts that their differences otherwise cause. Rationalism makes us search for commonality and mutual understanding, rather than make rash judgements based on superficial actions.

There are other forms of seeking, understanding and communicating. Art and religion, in particular, offer ways to delve into our inner beings to find deeper truths and share them with others. They have their places and, on an individual basis, may well offer some a deeper insight into the human condition than rationalism. But for the world as a whole, they cannot match its power to understand and share understanding.

So, Spinny and I are unapologetic for making rational thought the cornerstone of our work, and our website.

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# Away with all flesh

Short story. Brenda Fry's world is about to be turned upside-down.

Ah, see the happy young couple stretch and doze in the warm afterglow, sinking in the deep comfort of the parental sofa, limbs and hair entangled. The low afternoon sun streams through lace-covered windows, glinting on the guilty remains of their sins: crinkled biscuit wrappers, foil wrapped salami, half-empty bottle and a used condom hanging limply over the edge of the glass coffee table. Peace! What could ever disturb the bliss of a moment like this?

Why, the grate of key entering lock, for one thing.

"Shi-ite!" wails Willy, plucked from his reverie of grassy meadows. Sitting up too quickly nudges his lover's head off his chest and onto the hard arm of the sofa.

"Wha-at? Ow!" cries Fanny, drowsy.

"Coo-eee!" coos Mrs Fry.

He hisses, "it's Mum! She's home early. Quick!"

The poorly hung front door judders on its hinges. Their eyes cast around the room, taking in all the tell-tale signs that must now be hidden from view. Quick! The front door's closing! Where to begin?

"Are you there, Willy?" She's taking off her coat, now, hanging it on the peg next to the hallway mirror. Willy knows she'll take a moment to check her hair before coming in.

Fanny Lamb is busy, lifting a sofa cushion to shove empty wrappers underneath. She's about to stuff the salami there, too. Willy thinks otherwise, snatching it from her and shoving it on top of the old sideboard. Mustn't forget to remove it later.

"Willy? Are you there?"

"Er, hi Mum. Yeah, just in here."

"Now, you remember that Dad and I are going out tonight..."

He's got the bottle in hand and looks around in desperation. Fanny grabs it from him. She empties it into the aspidistra pot and rolls it under the sofa.

The living room door handle rattles and turns. "... so I managed to get away a bit early, but it means that you..."

Willy looks around. The floor's clear and only the condom remains on the coffee table. Phew! Made it!

"... are going to have to look after..."

Brenda Fry enters and stops. She eyes Fanny with little approval. "Oh, I didn't know you had company."

"Hello, Mrs Fry," smiles Fanny.

Brenda takes in the scene. Willy's trying hard not to look at the sideboard, or the cushions, or the sofa. He's not sure where to look and so ends up gazing at his feet. He hears his mother sniff.

"What's been going on here, then?"

Willy shifts his feet. "Nothing. Well, you know. Just hanging out. Fucking and stuff."

"Just fucking?"

"Yeah."

"Doesn't smell like just fucking to me." She sniffs again, then speaks with an icy calm that crawls down his spine and freezes his bowels. "Do you think I was born yesterday?"

"Look, Mrs Fry, it's not what you think..." begins Fanny, and receives a withering glance for her trouble.

"So, young lady, you know what I think, do you? You come around here and fuck Willy and then whatever else you get up to, and that makes you think you're an expert in our family matters, yes?"

"No, but..."

"I think it would be best if you left now. I'd like to have a word with my son."

Willy remembers that Fanny has left her school stuff in his bedroom. He snatches at the chance to slip out from under his mother's gaze. "I'll go and get your bag."

"No, I'll get it. And I'll see myself out, thanks." And Fanny's gone, leaving behind mother, son, and a stale smell of biscuit, salami and alcohol.

"So?" The single word escapes from her lips like a bursting tyre, and hangs in the air until Willy can bear it no longer.

He mutters, "we weren't really doing anything."

His mother sniffs again. "So, what's that I can smell?"

"It's just a bit, you know, we..."

"We what?"

Now his voice is barely audible. "We had a bit to eat together." Even staring at his feet, he can sense his mother flinch at his vulgarity.

"A bit. To... _eat_. Together." The words spit from her mouth and pollute the whole room.

"Yeah. Just a bit. I mean, not a meal or anything."

"God, I would hope not! You're fifteen years old!"

"I know."

"Under our roof? How _dare_ you!"

His head shakes in shame and misery. Brenda Fry's punctured tyre deflates with a long sigh and she collapses onto the sofa. Food wrappers scrunch noisily under her cushion. Her face an image of disgust, she stands again and delicately lifts the cushion edge. She recoils at the sight. Willy darts forward, grabs the offending cellophane and shoves it into his pocket. She winces and puts her hands to face.

"Oh, One! What have I done to deserve this? Where did I go wrong?" And she collapses into silence.

Willy wonders if he should stay or go. Through the door he hears Fanny's light tread descending the stairs. He pictures her, bag slung over shoulder, and wonders if she might dare come and say goodbye. But the footsteps stop suddenly, as if she's seen something, a movement in frosted pane of the front door, perhaps. A key scrapes in the lock. Her footsteps retreat hurriedly back upstairs as the front door judders open.

"Hello! I'm home! All ready to go?"

His father is back.

Like his wife before him, Ernest pauses in the sitting room doorway, his warm smile frozen by the scene.

"What's up?"

Brenda Fry glances her only son. "Do you want to tell him or shall I?"

"Tell me what?" Ernest's anticipation of a pleasant evening out has been disrupted and his is not pleased.

Willy hesitates. "I invited Fanny Lamb round after school..."

"And?"

"We did some homework together, we fucked a bit..."

"And?"

"And Mum came home."

"Mum came home? Is that it?"

"She found us... we were..."

"I caught them taking nourishment together," breaks in Brenda, exasperated.

"I see."

Ernest's words hang in the air, little swords of Damocles above Willy's head. At the top of the stairs Fanny Lamb hovers, waiting for the right moment to slip downstairs and out.

Brenda Fry has her hankie out now, she dabs at eyes and nose.

"Well," begins Ernest Fry. "We'll need to have a serious talk about this, young man," he intones magisterially. The dangling swords quiver.

"Yes, Dad."

"But right now, we must be off, my dear, or we'll miss the start of the show." He sounds brighter already. The swords vaporise.

"The show?" Brenda looks confused, as if she's forgotten about their plans.

"Yes, dear, come on. We don't want to arrive late or they'll not let us in till the interval."

She stares at him. A bomb has just gone off in the very bosom of their family, the sacred words of the Book of Instruction have been defiled, and all Ernest can think of is a musical show! A hand covers her mouth, her eyes prick, she gasps for words. With a sudden wave of a hand she turns and flees to the sterile haven of their kitchen, slamming the door behind her and leaning with her back to it.

The gleaming surfaces and securely closed cupboard doors comfort her. No hint of their purpose is discernible in their inscrutable facades. Brenda takes pride in her kitchen, and gets a warm feeling when she compares it with some other, slovenly kitchens she could name, where packaging can be glimpsed behind frosted glass doors, and bread loaves even out in full view. Not a crumb, nor granule, nor drop of ingestible material is visible in Brenda's kitchen, and even the tools and implements implicated in its shameful preparation are hidden away. A tasteful embroidered pastoral scene covers the gas cooker, and the ice box (Brenda doesn't trust those modern gas fridges) is hidden under the surfaces. All the eye beholds is polished pine and pretty designs. This is a decent kitchen, in a decent household. At least, it was...

The door shoves against her back. Ernest is trying to enter.

"Come on, Bren, let me in."

He shoves again at the door and, reluctantly, she stands aside, facing the tapestry cooker cover, away from the door. He comes up behind and puts his arms around her unyielding waist.

"It'll be all right. It's not so bad. They're just kids, trying things out..."

She pulls away. " _Not so bad?_ It's disgusting. Under my roof, too. I can't stand it..."

"Look, I'll talk to him later. Don't worry. It won't happen again."

She spins to face him. How can he be so calm? He should be raging at this defilement of their home, striking out at the sin. Cleansing her temple of this evil.

"For the One's sake, is that it? Don't you care that your son - our only son - has been here in your own house... ingesting? With a girl?"

He spreads his hands, trying to absorb her rage. "Of course I care."

"Then you've a funny way of showing it. _I think we need to have a serious talk about this,_ " she mimics cruelly, emphasising his slight lisp.

This makes Ernest angry, too. "So, what do you want me to do? Thrash him within an inch of his life? Banish him from ever going within three yards of the girl again? Or maybe wire his jaw, just to be on the safe side?"

"Don't be ridiculous," she snaps back, happy at last to get a reaction. "I just want you to explain to him that we have certain standards of decency, and as long as he lives under our roof, he must respect them."

"So, you'd rather they went off and _ate"_ (she winces at his crudeness) "together somewhere else, would you? Out of sight and out of mind? Like, in the park or something, like cheap little picnickers?"

"No, I want you to tell him to stop doing it all together!"

He spreads his arms out wide. "That's like holding back the tide. These are young people, doing the most natural thing in the world. They're curious. They've hormones. No power on earth can stop that."

"So that's it, is it? It's all right because it's natural?"

"Well, it is, isn't it? I mean, we all have to eat..."

"Please stop using foul language."

"All right, we all have to ingest, don't we? I mean, otherwise, that's it. Game over for the whole human race."

"There's absolutely no need to be so coarse. Of course we have to ingest, but we don't have to do it in public. There's a time and place. And our living room, after school, is neither." Her eyes dart around the kitchen, her involuntary check that all is in order, no visible signs of foodstuff or any outward indication of the kitchen's purpose.

He glances at his watch. They'll be lucky to make it in before the interval, now.

"Look, are we going out, or what?"

"For One's sake! I don't believe you. At a time like this, all you can think about it... you really don't take this seriously, do you?"

"I _do_ take it seriously, but, you know..."

"But you think it's natural. Just one of those things young people - young _boys_ \- have to do. Is that it?" She stands close to him now and her eyes narrow. She sniffs. She frowns. He squirms, feeling the guilt rising up to his cheeks and forehead.

"What's that odour?"

Ernest glances at his watch. "Look, if we leave now..."

"I can smell..." she sniffs again, and grimaces. "Urgh, it's fish, isn't it?"

He looks away. "It isn't what you think..."

"Oh, it isn't? So what _do_ I think?"

He's skewered now. Mouthspray should have eradicated the evidence, but perhaps the fish odour kind of lingers on clothing.

"You think... I ingested something... on the way home."

"No. I think I _know_ that." Her voice is too calm now. "But what else am I _thinking_ , do you suppose?"

He shrugs. Tension always gets him in the gut, and he feels a bubble of gas welling up his pipes. As he clenches his lips firmly to contain it, prawn and trout flavours refill his mouth. He tries to release them, discreetly, through his nose.

"Perhaps I'm thinking that you weren't alone?"

He evades her eyes, settling for a moment on that awful old tapestry she insists on draping over the cooker. For One's sake, everyone knows what's under there, it's just a bit of machinery, not such a big deal, is it?

Thwack!

He's dazed, bright lights dance before his eyes and it takes him a moment to realise she's slapped him. He puts a hand to a cheek that's just going from numb to stinging and his eyes clear enough to show her face, red, quivering with rage.

"You've been with someone, haven't you?" Brenda hisses. " _Eating_ with her." She spits out the obscene word. "Eating! That's the word, isn't it? Eating. Eating _fish._ "

He can't answer. His watery eyes range over the gleaming, sterile surfaces. Even the taps are covered, ashamed of their guilt by association. Ancient words from the Book of Instruction crowd unbidden into his head, _"...and ye shall not share what ye consume, nor let your neighbour nor your enemy know of what ye partake... only a man may share of what his wife consumes, and a wife with her husband, when they have come together and confirmed their fertility..."_ He'd believed all these sacred commandments, too. Once.

"Well?"

She is waiting for an answer. Her puffy red eyes sear into his. He doesn't want to lie to her, and he doesn't want to hurt her. To say anything now would mean choosing to do one of those things. If only she would let him stay silent...

"Say something, for One's sake."

He stretches out his arms as if calling on the world to support him, to say he's not the only one, it's not such a big thing, not really...

"Maybe, yes, I took a little nourishment with someone on the way home."

Now it's done, the truth is out, well, a part of it, anyway. The door is unlocked, but the question is will she now turn away and let things be, or will she continue to press it open to examine just what lies beyond?

"Who is she? Someone from the office?"

"No. Just a girl. Soho."

" _Soho_?" The word spits out from a face contorted with rage and disgust. "A common little tramp, you mean? You _paid_ her to eat with you?"

He chews a lip in mute confession.

"I see. And are you going to tell me this was a one off?"

He closes his eyes and starts to shake his head, the movement interrupted by a sharp slap, harder this time, that makes his left ear ring. Her words sound distant through the buzzing.

"Look around you. Go on, look around. What do see?"

He does so, wondering what the right answer might be. If there is one. "The kitchen?"

"Yes, the kitchen. Our beautiful, clean, healthy kitchen. Do you see any mess or filth? Any ingestibles left out? No, you don't. And why is that? Do you know how hard I work to keep this place hygienic?"

"Yes," he mumbles, suddenly overwhelmed by the vision of her daily battle against the unseen enemy. The arm-length disposable gloves, the head-to-toe coverall and face mask, her incessant scrubbing and polishing.

"And why do you think I do that?"

Again the words come to his mind "... _and thou shalt maintain thy family in health and hygiene, and do all that thou canst to keep thy family safe from sickness and harm, that they may prosper and grow..."_

"To keep us in health and hygiene," he mumbles.

Her eyes are slits. "Yes, that's right. Health and hygiene. All that effort, to keep you and Willy in health and hygiene, But it's all pointless, now, isn't it? And why? Because what's the point of me making all that effort when all the time you're eating around and bringing in God knows what diseases from outside? I don't suppose you inspected the kitchen where this... this _fish_ was prepared, did you? No, of course not. Too busy taking nourishment with that little trollop. Of course, if it was only you who was affected by whatever bugs and diseases you pick up there, then I really wouldn't care. Really, I wouldn't. But it's not like that, is it. They're contagious. You bring them right back into the house. Into...into my kitchen."

And it's now that she breaks down into great gasping sobs, at the thought of her immaculate kitchen being defiled by the alien germs he's brought in and is even now exhaling into her sterile spaces. He wants to hold her, stroke her hair and say it's all right, really, nothing has changed. Her house and family are still safe. But he daren't touch her, he knows she'll push him away.

She's pulled a tissue from her sleeve and sniffs into it. He thinks she may be trying to say something, and strains to catch the word as she repeats it.

"Why?"

He says nothing, offers instead his handkerchief, which she snatches from him. What can he say?

"Is it the fish? Is all this because I don't like fish?"

She looks into his eyes, she's throwing him a lifeline. Her dislike of fish, some minor, objective point of issue that perhaps they can agree on, a tiny foundation on which to start rebuilding something akin to normality, whatever that is. But still he can't lie. There's more than fish to this.

"Well, yes, I guess that's something to do with it..."

"I tried, you know. Oh, One, how I tried. Salmon, mackerel, even mussels for One's sake. Remember?"

Oh, he remembered all right. Her face screwed up, gagging at an unbearded mussel caught in her tight little throat. She couldn't bring herself to swallow it.

"I know, I know..."

"But still, I would have cooked it for you, if you'd asked. You didn't have to go with some little trollop, just for fish." She shudders as if struck by an iceberg. "Oh, it's so disgusting. It should be stopped. They should make it illegal."

For a moment he thinks she's talking about fish and is tempted to put in a mild defence of the stuff - after all, it is good for the brain - but fortunately he doesn't get the chance. She's not talking about fish at all.

"Little hussies, it's degrading to all women, not just themselves. Doing what they do with other people's husbands. They should be banned, no, locked up."

He wonders if he should mention that not all food workers are women, and not all of their clients are husbands. He thinks about the men and women who'd shuffled in and out of the seedy little backstreet restaurant while he'd tucked in with Tracy. The lonely old business traveller, that poor young chap with the damaged face, the powdered widow. Would anyone choose to take nourishment with them, if not for money? Mind you, it was true what she'd said about the kitchen. Perhaps, if society could be a little more accepting of such places, they could introduce some sensible laws to improve their hygiene. Maybe even have inspections, like they did in brothels and bordellos.

"It's unnatural, that's what it is."

He can't help being struck by what a preposterously unreasonable thing that is to say. Eating's the most natural thing in the world, along with fucking. Fucking and eating - what would happen if we didn't all do both on a regular basis. What could possibly be _more_ natural?

He sums up this thought succinctly in the one word, "why?"

Now she's startled, like the lioness when the wildebeest she's cornered turns to defend itself. But she recovers.

"Because, as the scriptures say, _Go out and multiply and fill the earth with your offspring, but let not others witness your ingesting, nor gaze upon your nourishment. Let only those who are united in fruitful union ingest together, that their offspring may be fully nourished_."

"Yes, I know, but..." Is there any point in arguing when the Book of Instruction is invoked? Ernest is very familiar with the words. He read the whole work once, cover to cover, and was surprised at how many passages it contains that were never quoted by Brenda or her beloved preachers. Many of them made no sense at all, consisting of _non sequiturs_ or references to obscure notions. "... _you shall never again attempt to tame electricity or use it for your own purposes_..." was one that always bothered him. What on earth was electricity?

"But what?"

He spreads his hands, hopeless, wanting to end the conversation, to surrender and get back to where they were before. But she's waiting for a response.

"Is it really so unnatural?"

Her eyes narrow. It's the response she's waiting for, the grist to her mill.

"So that's it, is it? You think this basic - base - instinct is natural, because we have to do it? Like animals, we should all just ingest wherever and whenever we feel like it, because it's natural? Your own son and that little trollop should do it in _our house_ , because it's natural?"

He's stung by that. "Oh, that's a bit unkind. Fanny seems a nice girl to me."  
"Oh, that's right, stick up for her. I admit, she's a pretty thing, and I suppose you wouldn't mind going to table with her yourself, eh? And she probably would! Mind you, what can one expect, coming from a family like hers?"

"What's wrong with her family?"

"What's wrong? For One's sake, you've heard what people say. That father of hers is a very suspect character..."

"He's a professor of archaeology."

"Exactly. Always poking around in the relics of the past. If you want to know the truth about the past, look in the scriptures. It's all there. You don't need to dig up old bones and things to find out the truth."

"You're wrong."

Brenda and Ernest swing round, mouths gaping, to where the voice came from. The young ones are both standing there, Fanny has not gone home, instead she now watches them steadily, hands on hips, jaw jutting.

"It's not true. I've seen the evidence. Daddy has shown me some real old books, the ones that go back way before your Book of Instruction."

Brenda draws herself in the face of this unexpected challenge. "There were no books before the Book of Instruction, nothing but people living in sin and debauchery, ingesting and consuming like animals. Then the One sent the Great Wave and wiped them all from the face of the earth, those except his chosen ones, and to them he gave his Book of Instruction as a covenant for all time."

"It was a massive electro-magnetic pulse."

"What?"

"The Great Wave was something called an electro-magnetic pulse that swept across the earth two thousand years ago. It wasn't sent by the One at all. It was caused by the people who lived then and used electricity all the time to do stuff."

Hearing the word startles Ernest. "Electricity? What is electricity?"

"It's a form of energy. It's what lightning is. People used to be able to harness it and use it for all sorts of things."

Brenda snorts. "Harness and use lightning? Nonsense." Brenda hasn't read through all of the scriptures and has never heard of electricity.

"It's true. They generated it and then fed it all round the place along wires and through the air. They made literally billions of little machines, much tinier than gas or steam machines can be, and they all talked to each other by sending out waves of electricity into the air. But these waves built up like the ripples in the ocean. You know how, every now and then, a load of waves in the sea just happen to all hit the same place at the same time, so they add together to make one big wave? Well, people didn't understand how all these little waves might one day all join together to make one big wave. But that's what happened, and the strength of that wave made this massive pulse of energy that went around the whole world."

"And that was the Great Wave?" asks Ernest.

"That's it! And it destroyed all their little machines. The problem was, they used those machines for absolutely everything. And all the knowledge they'd stored up was on them. It was all wiped out in a flash. Apart from a few books still on paper that they kept in libraries."

"What a ridiculous pile of tosh. Utter nonsense." Brenda 's eyes shoot warnings at the girl. But Fanny just returns her look with a gentle smile.

"There's a lot of scientific evidence for it, Mrs Fry. I've seen some of it. And it explains what the Book of Instruction is, and how it came to be written. It doesn't mean what some people interpret it to mean."

Brenda gasps, but can find no words. She throws a glance towards her husband, as if expecting him to defend her, but he looks away. Letting out a final, exasperated "doh!" she storms from the kitchen and they hear her heavy tread ascending the staircase. A door slams.

Silence in the kitchen. Fanny chews her lip while Willy scratches at a mark on the door with his thumbnail. Ernest gazes at the embroidered cooker cover but doesn't see it. He begins to speak, thoughtfully.

"So the Great Wave happened, but it was this electricity thing?"

"Yes."

"And all the records, all our history, up to that point, were also stored using electricity, so they were all lost?"

"Most of them, yes. But there were still some written paper documents, too. But they were all hidden away after the pulse."

"Hidden? Why?"

Fanny puffs out her cheeks and blows, slowly, wondering where to start.

"It seems things were pretty bad then. It's hard to imagine just how dependent people were on this electricity stuff, for everything they did. Transport, health, heating, nearly all their work used it. Suddenly it was all gone. They didn't know what to do."

"They must have been completely lost."

"Yes, and that wasn't the worst of it. This electro-magnetic pulse had also affected life, especially reproduction. All animals and plants were affected to some extent, especially humans. The radioactive pulse sterilised nearly everyone, they just stopped reproducing. It looked like the whole human race was about to die out."

"Like it says in the Book of Instruction."

"Yes, but it was all just a massive accident."

"And some people survived, obviously."

"A few, just enough to get back together and start again. They formed a survival committee and agreed on a plan. First off, they had to find a way to get repopulating. There were some fertile people left, scattered about so no one knew where or who they were. There was only one way to find out."

"Get everyone to fuck everyone else."

"Exactly. And once someone got pregnant, they had to make sure the fertile couple survived and stayed together. The thing was, with this massive food shortage, they had to ensure the whole family got enough nourishment, so special rations were kept back for them."

"So fertile couples and families were looked after, and everyone else..."

"Everyone else had to fend for themselves. But of course when people realised they weren't happy and started rioting. So the survival committee made up new rules that everyone had to keep their food rations secret. Nobody was allowed to see anyone else's food allowance. Except for fertile couples and their families. These rules were written out and copied and passed on to everyone who was left."

"And that's how the Book of Instruction came about."

"That's what Dad thinks. And he reckons the One is what they called the leader of the survival committee. She must have been quite a character to pull the whole race back from the very edge of extinction."

"You know, there have always been rumours about this sort of stuff, but I never thought there was anything in it."

"Dad says loads of people know all about it, but they're just not allowed to talk about it in public, because it contradicts what the scriptures say."

They fall silent, because they hear Brenda descending from the heights, footsteps dragging as if she's reluctant to leave something behind. She enters the kitchen, reading from an old book with a battered leather cover. Her finger traces across the page, then goes to her face and wipes away a tear.

"I'm just looking at some bits I've never read before." Her voice is barely audible. "And it doesn't make any sense. Listen... _and you know that radio devices of all manner, be they smartphones or satellites, were the cause of the Great Wave, and they are to be banished from the face of the earth, lest it shall happen again_... It's gibberish, makes no sense. What does it mean by radio devices, smartphones and satellites?"

"It probably made sense when it was written, Mrs Fry," whispers Fanny.

Brenda looks at her. The hate and anger are gone. "Does your father understand what it means?"

Fanny nods. "I think he has a good idea what lots of this stuff is about. Not all the details, but he has a rough idea of what life was like before the Great Wave."

"I think I'd like to meet him."

Ernest, who can hardly believe his ears, snatches at the suggestion. "Fine! Let's invite them round. We could have an orgy with them, get to know them."

Brenda smiles, shyly. "Why don't we invite them for dinner?"

Ernest gulps.

"You know, I might even try cooking fish for them."

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# Bookend

And that's it. Now the year is over and we begin to look forward to the next one. All that remains is to thank Jane and Olivia for their patient support, proof reading and graphic design skills. Without them, this book wouldn't be.

And we thank you, too, kind reader for coming with us this far. We hope you've enjoyed it. If you're interested to look at other stuff we've done, please take a look at our Smashwords author page, or else visit the blogs on our website and at Engineering and Technology Magazine.

Wishing you all the best for 2013 and we hope to see you again next year!

Francis and Spinny

http://www.francisgoode.com

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About the author:

Francis Goode, engineer, philosopher and writer, lives in a cave with his arachnid amanuensis, Spinny. Please feel free to visit them at: http://www.francisgoode.com

Discover other titles by Francis Goode at Smashwords.com:

Life of Spinoza by Francis Goode  
Price: Free! 8880 words. Published on March 6, 2012. Nonfiction.   
A new version of the earliest biography of the seventeenth century Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza.

