Tuesday 25 March 2014

Mine's smaller than yours


Every now and then, there is a no-news day, but I think the last one was in the late 1930s as Hitler was making plans to invade the rest of Europe. The BBC announcer said something like, "Nothing of note has happened today, so here is some music."

I sit drinking coffee in the kitchen every morning, and one or two things always filter through into my dawning consciousness. This morning, it was the confirmation that MH370 has probably ditched into 23,000 feet of water in a remote part of the Indian Ocean, though they cannot confirm this right now. The probability of this was established by a British team (hooray!) using seven pings to a satellite over many thousands of miles.

The next item was about British prisoners being denied books sent to them by friends and relatives, setting the penal system back about 150 years to when the Victorian humane societies lobbied to allow inmates access to libraries for self-improvement reasons.

At first, I thought this was a massive retrograde step, but then I remembered someone telling me - in 1970 - that they had managed to smuggle 5 micro-dot tablets of LSD into Canterbury gaol by disguising them as full-stops in a worthy tome about gardening or something. I wondered at the time who on earth would want to take acid in a prison.

I made a visit with this girl to her boyfriend in Canterbury gaol once, and this was the first - and hopefully last - time I ever set foot in a prison.

The night before, she had cooked a huge Dundee cake for her boyfriend and she gave it to one of the guards for inspection before the he handed it over to him in our presence. As he took it away, I made some sort of joke about there being a file in it, but the guard didn't think it was very funny.

Just as the guard handed it to the inmate and stepped almost out of earshot, the girl said to her criminal boyfriend in a hoarse whisper, "There's an ounce of hash in that cake!" I was horrified, and expected to be arrested for supplying for the rest of the visit.

As mobile telephones became smaller and smaller, it became easier to get them into prisons by stuffing them into dead pigeons and throwing them over the perimeter wall into the exercise-yard. Presumably, now that they are getting a lot bigger again, they have to throw dead foxes over the walls instead.

It has always made me laugh about the shrinking and expanding cycles of mobile phone technology, and how men went from saying how big theirs was to how small theirs was, in comparison to everyone else's.

The first mobile I ever used was basically a car-battery with a finger dialling ring and full-sized hand-set attached to it. Then they all turned into objects which came to be derisively referred to as 'bricks', by men whose innovative batteries had allowed a keypad to be made which was too small to be used by an adult hand.

Then they started digging up rare earths just to make screens touch sensitive and allow as big a keyboard as would fit into the screen, and so had to make the screens bigger to accommodate them.

Just before he died, Steve Jobs unveiled a mobile which was so big, that it was pretty much the same size as your average laptop, but without the protective lid that all conventional laptops have to protect them, so a whole new industry was developed to make cases for these tablets so you didn't accidentally break the expensive screen.

My latest phone is somewhere between a very small one and a larger model with basic, steam-powered internet available on it. I have - it has to be admitted - turned off the parental-control feature and Googled up a couple of pictures of naked ladies, just to see if I could.

On a screen the size of mine, there is a lot of guesswork based on years of previous experience involved when trying to work out even the sex of a naked human, so I won't be wasting too much time on this again in the future.

When I was a kid, I longed for a tiny - impossibly small - television set which I could take to bed and view under the covers, but I had to wait until I was about 40 before they had invented one.

When I saw this little T.V. for sale in a magazine, I had to buy it, just to fulfil a childhood dream. It was even colour - way beyond my 10 year-old wildest ones.

H.I. and me quickly discovered its limitations as we huddled around it, vying for head-space. Football matches turn into spot-the-ball competitions, and foreign films become nicely composed images with incomprehensible dialogue, spoilt by a piece of white cotton running across the screen beneath them.

We have only watched two things on this little thing from start to finish: 'Ben Hur' and the funeral of Princess Diana - both epics.


32 comments:

  1. Oh you do write a good ramble Tom. I also remember wishing for a mini-TV under the blankets while I was reading a book by the light of a piece of luminous 'GloGlob'. Mum could spot the shine of my reading lamp under the door so I recharged the glow by periodically holding it up to the light and clicking it on and off quickly.

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    1. So your mum didn't approve of prisoners reading books either?

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  2. I've just read your last post. I'll make my next comment much more critical and less sycophantic Your Honour.

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    1. When I said I didn't want or need sycophancy, I was not trying to attract the sort of humourless insults that Heron specialises in. See my next comment, please.

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  3. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I need your help in a difficult matter.

    If you trawl through the comments of my previous post, you will come across 'A Heron's View's latest one (to date) where he simply says that I have a big, (my comma, not his) ugly mouth. That's it.

    I have wrestled with myself for ages now, trying to find a reason for allowing him to spout his worthless opinions on my blog, and I have tried very hard not to find him so irritating that I have an overwhelming desire to travel to his hovel in Ireland and give him a good kick in the nuts. This is bad for my health, and I think I will block him tonight.

    I know I said that I detest sycophancy (I was lying) but why should I just let the twerp remotely wind me up in such an idiotic and meaningless way?

    What do you think? Should I block him?

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    1. Let the little chap stay Thomas

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    2. Heron provided the picture that brought back a follower that you scared away.

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    3. Ok - you two swung it. If he is a glutton for punishment, then I'll see how much of his I can take before the annual review.

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    4. I'll have you all know that the above attack on the bearded Druid was done sober, in the morning. That's how bad it was.

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. That's the most sensible thing you have said so far.

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  5. Back to your post (I'm on topic for the first time in ages) this morning I had much the same experience. Checked the news and the statement by the Malaysian Prime Minister ... and for the first time since this saga began, I was in tears.

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  6. I blocked him, but he came back. I think he has some bloody leprechaun key.

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    1. Fine. The people's vote has it. He knows how I am going to react in the future anyway.

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  8. I still miss my b & w 10 or 12" screen Zenith television from the late 70s/early 80s. Where did that thing go? I probably gave it away, and I bet is still works.

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    1. You have a very nice, sensitive mouth -- but Heron should stay...

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    2. Yes, I know. If he has the balls to, then he's almost welcome.

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  9. After reading this piece Tom - multi subject if ever there was one - I am coming to the conclusion that you are definitely a divergent (as opposed to a convergent) thinker.

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    1. I'm not so much of a thinker that I will not have to look that up, Weave. I have an inkling that it sort of means tangental, though.

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  10. Obviously I have never been to prison, the only thing I have to go on is Porridge. and didn't someone come around with a book trolley from the library? So why do they need books sending in? if there isn't a library maybe they should take away all the TV's and invest it in books. they also have the internet.... am I crazy here.

    again I have missed all the weird and wonderful comments. pesky work.

    still no insult has come to mind.

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    1. What's obvious about it? For all I know you are a mass-murderer, albeit a well-read one. There were plenty of those, including book burners.

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  11. I believe he should stay as I would miss your occasional rants and more frequent foamings. On the same sort of subject, I reluctantly removed your remark about my grandson. It's last year's joke, and worse, those things can become attached to people as if they were the truth.
    I gave a young college student a 3" television; during the September 11th events she said the condensed picture kept her sane.

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    1. Yes, I saw you removed it and I don't blame you for it. I am one of those people who wrongly think that a joke gets funnier the more times it is repeated. It won't happen again - in that form...

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  12. It is of no great importance wether I comment on this blog or not Joanne. For like you, I am only a visitor. Tom is possibly a prisoner of his own making.This bombastic arrogance, the use of foul language, sexual innuendos etcetera all seem to point to an unresolved childhood issue.
    "For people who seek attention because they have the feeling that they deserve to be in the centre of attention. Because they aren’t mature enough and they still think with their inner child’s mentality which makes them believe that they are the centre of the world.
    For example:individuals with Histronic Personality Disorder may have a difficulty achieving emotional intimacy in romantic or sexual relationships."

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    1. Oh dear.
      Heron... Blogging is like life
      In it, is needed a little humour
      I understand that you miss that humour
      Which is a shame.

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    2. Yes John, Heron is not exactly a barrel of laughs is he?

      I can put up with almost anything except an underdeveloped (or complete lack of a) sense of humour, and - ironically - the times when I feel most uncomfortable with myself is when I lose my own, as I have with Heron recently.

      I used to think that Heron's irrelevant, humourless and abusive comments were as a result of being drunk in an isolated place, but - unless he drinks all day long - I now believe that they are simply the sum total of what is going on in his teenage mind trapped in an elderly body.

      Still, it is good that I have let him make the comments which are of no importance to him, because I really don't have the time to trawl through all those websites and dictionaries from where he gets his half-baked and simplistic misunderstandings that he applies to every situation in his life which perplexes him. I might - eventually - learn something from him.

      You know something is going on but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?

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    3. P.S. Of course I am - like everyone else - the centre of the world. That's my world, not yours.

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    4. He spelled the word histrionic wrong anyway

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  13. I have a question about your blog. Months ago, I clicked on your name, and it said that your profile wasn't available. But then I saw it on John's sidebar.

    Is your blog supposed to be an invite only type blog? Just curious.

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    1. No, it's open to anyone, which is why wankers like Heron can say what ever they like. There was a Lord Thomas of Wellington who was hi-jacked by a load of Indonesians, and I have only just worked out how to get rid of them.

      I have no profile because I don't like lying to nice people.

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