I was just thinking about you...

Richard Dawkins explained in a book, several back and possibly Unweaving the Rainbow, but possibly not, how Uri Geller (could be David Blaine or the other one...) makes people believe he can mend their old watches with the power of his mind.



It's all to do with mass media and maths.

The fact that most people are taken in by mass media, believing everything and anything ("Eoghan" is pronounced "Owen"), helps him achieve the (effect of the) supernatural. But mainly it's that people are generally thick when it comes to maths which nails it.

The argument goes something like this... (I've probably got the figures wrong; it's a while since I read it...)

Imagine five million people watch Uri and he instructs them all to go and find an old watch from a cupboard somewhere in their house. Imagine only two percent of the people watching that programme go and find their old watch. That's still 100,000 people digging around in their "paper bag, cling film and fuses" drawer. *

Watches work by winding them up, or with a battery. Eventually, the winder winds down or the battery fails. Some end up in the drawer. When these 100,000 people find their watches and Uri says "hold it in your hand, rub it, think deep thoughts" etc, the heat from their hands changes the temperature of the winding mechanism or the battery and, momentarily, and because of physics, not because of Uri, the watch works for a few seconds.

Imagine this only happens to one percent of the people who actually find a watch. That's still 1000 people whose watch suddenly works because "Uri says it will"- It's a Kind of Magic!

Uri then says "if your watch worked, phone us!" A mere one percent of the people whose watches ticked for a bit phone up.

Uri still gets to talk to ten people. Plenty to fill the show and, more importantly, all seen by the five million people watching in the first place.

It all rests on these tiny percentages, where coincidences happen, and their effect on the large percentages of people who are open to any suggestion, however stupid, because of their previous experience, ignorance, personality flaws, special needs, religion etc. (Including the very unlikely scenario in which Uri Geller mends your old watch through the TV by pulling a concentrating face and talking with an accent. **)

"Engineered" coincidences for the purposes of entertainment, coercion, gain etc. are one thing, but I guess coincidences don't arise spontaneously all that often. We only think they do because we're more likely to single them out from the background chaff of our lives and remember them.

I only mention this because I seem to have been the on the receiving end of an unexpectedly high number of them recently. Picking just three, some of them were to my disadvantage...

• the woman in the Post Office to whom I complained and whose cloud of "customer un-service" still surrounded her when I saw her again in a restaurant in the evening. So much so that the waiting staff ended up throwing a glass (nearly) at me...

...some of them were to other people's advantage...

• Someone I sold a raffle ticket to won the very prize he took the piss out of. (If it needs mending, Chris, see above...)

...and some of them were to my absolute advantage...

• My nephew was born, unexpectedly, two days ago, in the brief window of time I was around in the North to see him...

Perhaps that was just 2008.

But I'm going to be monitoring in 2009... Happy New Year.

(* "Man Drawer" / ** "I'm sorry, I can't do the accent" - Both © Michael McIntyre - unaccountably missed last year and caught only on DVD...)

Whiteout...

The sun has come out now, but for the last couple of days it's been really cold. -6°C at its lowest and not much above freezing during the day. And foggy!

And this morning, although it hadn't snowed where my Dad lives, it had snowed a couple of miles to the east (closer to Russia).



Now, why couldn't it have done that at Christmas?

Spot the difference...

Zoe spent most of the weekend with her head in this book...



On closer examination...

"That's not my monster! It's nose is too bobbly, eyebrows too hairy, ears are too rough..." etc

...it seems that the book is actually the preliminary script ideas for...



That's not my monster! It's CGI is too ropey!

That's not Torchwood! It's a low-budget ITV rip-off!!

That's not an actress! It's the rough-looking one from S Club!!!

Full House...

My niece, Zoe, paid a visit this last weekend, took in some shopping and some sightseeing, and even visited me at work on Friday afternoon.

Of course, being only 1, (and a couple of months), she had to bring her entire baby infrastructure with her - Mum, Dad, Grandad, cot, bottles, nappies, several dozen bags, most of the Early Learning Centre, etc. My normally very minimalist house was temporarily turned into a cross between a refugee camp and E-Bay (and there was also the "How many ways can you blow up an airbed?" dilemma), but it was all absolutely worth it, as it's the first time all four of them have been down to see me together and we had a really excellent family weekend.

On Saturday, they all went over to Southampton on the ferry - all tourists must do that, it's the law...



(If you zoom in, you can just about see my sister waving...)

The reason I'm not on the ferry is because we needed a car to get back in with the four hundred-weight of shopping and baby paraphernalia. But as I got there in time to take the photo of the ferry docking*, it did prove that it's quicker to drive into town (11 miles) than to sail (1.5 miles).

(* DO ferries dock? This one looks too small. Perhaps it berths?)

Shopping done, it was whistle-stop tour of the New Forest. Roger had a good excuse to pass on this excursion as (1) Zoe was alseep and (2) Sky Sports News was on. A happy coincidence for him! They both missed...



...Rufus Stone...

(I think we established that we last came here over 20 years ago. I might have to try and find a photo of me and my sister being surly teenagers standing by it - I'm sure one must exist.)

...and some trees...



(Herne the Hunter just out of shot...)

The other compulsory touristy thing is to crawl about on the glass floor of the Spinnaker Tower. I have made people do this before, and Zoe had to do it too...






The concensus of opinion was that this would freak out Ambler grandparents, but it didn't seem to freak Zoe out at all. She did dribble on the glass a lot though, which perhaps caused a health and safety slippage incident after we left...

Back down the lift for a hot chocolate and a coffee... (actual sizes...)



Had a great weekend!

---

More photos on...

A Creative Solution...

Or alternatively, just tell them to stop the hell drawing on the walls!!!

In saner times, if you scribbled on the walls your parents wouldn't write to the Observer in middle-class torment, they would make you scrub it off and give you a clip round the ear.

And quite right too. It never did us any harm, etc. etc.

You bet!

A successfully family afternoon! We won £72.50 altogether. I won. Roger won. Susan won. Zoe won (and she's not strictly speaking old enough to bet yet...)

My Dad was the Weakest Link, leaving with nothing...

Latest update on Miss Ambler..

Here is my niece, seen with a new toy. One of those mobile-touchy-feely things which parents hang over cots, etc to stimulate the senses.



As you can see, she is so impressed that she has one eye shut, one eye open and her tongue out. Aren't modern toys wonderful?

Anyway, I got to see her too, which was my main reason for the "National Express" tour over the weekend. When I saw her at Christmas, she was still in her plastic box and I couldn't hold her, so it was very special to be able to this time.



However, no-one noticed at the time, and I didn't notice until I blogged this photo, that Evil Tony Blair is keeping a watchful, Nanny-State-style eye on proceedings... Scary!

Monday is Lincoln - "Quick, Sophie! Run!"

This is Lincoln Cathedral - "one of the finest mediaeval gothic buildings in Europe..." (it says here).

And it is! Seen here from the castle (which I didn't know Lincoln had), it's very imposing and grand.



Looking the other way from the castle, you get a picture of how flat and tedious the rest of Lincoln (and Lincolnshire) is...



...and that somehow makes the cathedral all the more striking.

I haven't been here since I was about ten, and my Dad hadn't been here since before I was about ten, so we spent a long time looking round and having digital camera shoot-outs. My photos (camera cost about £200) came out loads better than my Dad's (camera cost more than double that) so I was quite pleased...



You really do have to wonder exactly how they built it without modern technology to help and Health and Safety law to hinder... "Have you been hurt building a cathedral? We can help you on a no win, no fee basis..."

If I play with the settings on my digital camera enough, I can often (through no skill or judgement) get good photos of hard-to-get-good-photos-of things like stained glass windows. This is the one good one of about twelve which didn't really work...



...and here's another with lighting effects. Don't ask me what part of the cathedral this is. I'm guessing the high altar?



Now, I suppose that the inside of one mediaeval gothic cathedral is a bit like the inside of another one, and this has been exploited by the makers of The Da Vinci Code, who filmed inside Lincoln, pretending it was Westminster Abbey...

These very ornate looking cathedrabilia are, in fact, fake. The tomb is plywood...



...and blokey here is made of polystyrene...



Look out for them as Sophie Neveu runs past when you go to see the film. What would be really funny would be if they ran past them several times, repeatedly, like the gang does in Scooby Doo...

(If you zoom into the picture above, you will be able to see that the inscription is done with Letraset...)

There's obviously a huge debate about whether they should have allowed the filming to take place in the Cathedral, as the story (if you don't know, and until Christmas, I didn't) details the Church's supposed duplicity and gynophobia over a number of centuries. Did they sell out to Hollywood money? You can read the Chancellor of the Cathedral's views yourself, but I liked this little extract from his sermon the week the crew packed up and left...

"Many have come this week to get a glimpse of Tom Hanks. We know from the staff and from our own experience that a few have also caught a glimpse of God. That is our work and that is our mission."

Anyway, they can now afford the thousands needed to restore the huge "Dean's Eye" stained glass window in the North Transept...



...and even though I doubt Tom Hanks paid for the scaffolding personally, Sophie-Neveu-like, I can't help but see a connection.

Saturday is Nottingham

Speaking to colleagues over the last week, I have learned that, during half-term, one was off to the Red Sea, one was going to Iceland (the country, not the shop), one was on a mini-break to New York... you get the idea. My performance management assessor was telling me about his recent holiday to Cuba. The Chappell family are bathing in the temperate waters of some estuary in Australia and the Streets are off to Devon, where it will probably rain, but at least it's touristy.

I am doing the Tour of Urban Population Centres of England, to which the soundtrack is probably National Express by The Divine Comedy. Southampton, Northampton, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, Birmingham, Reading and back to Southampton - between Friday and Tuesday I shall have passed through all of them.

Saturday is Nottingham.

I went on the tram for the first time:



Much better than queueing for ages to drive into the Victoria or Broadmarsh Centres, paying the best part of a tenner to park and then finding out that someone in their yellow Smartcar opened their door and knocked your wing mirror off.

The tram even has a conductor who chats jovially and sells you your ticket. And it has one of those "elevator voices" which tells you when you are stopping, saying helpful, calming things like "The Next stop is High School, for the Arboretum" and "The next stop is Nottingham Trent University, not really a proper University, it used to be Trent Poly."

Anyway, it drops you off in Slab Square (or Old Market Square as it's more properly known), which used to look like this:



...at the moment looks like this:



...and in a few months time, apparently, will look like this:







...but don't hold your breath, because it's being done by the same people who did the Diana (comma, reverential pause...) Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain Ring of Water Thing in Hyde Park which broke down and had to be closed.

But some things never change, and it's nice to know that people still sit around, eat their sandwiches and shout at their children near the Victoria Centre Clock. People stand around and text near it now too.



Whatever they are doing, they all ignore it when it goes off - all birds-a-flapping, frogs-a-jumping, squirrels-a-squirrelling and harpsicord music-a-playing. It's nice to know that some things don't change - people ignored it 20 years ago too. After all the effort Rowland Emett probably put into designing and making it, it seems a shame. But as he's been dead since 1991, I doubt he minds...

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, etc

There are other advantages to being up north for Christmas (other than getting to see my niece) - one is that is snows! (Which it never does in Hampshire...)



However, taste and decency can be noticeable by their absence in all parts of the country...



This particular crime was captured by my sister in one of the rare moments she is not currently spending at the hospital.

Well, it beats going to the sales...

Well, if it's Boxing Day, it must be the Raft Races. (Actually, it might be the Raft Races - it's a sort of on-and-off family tradition...)

Here's a general view as the (not very sturdy) rafts come floating down the River Derwent at Matlock Bath.



Here are the regulation Santas...



Some people hadn't spent much time making their rafts, but had brought their lunch along with them...



Fortunately, the firemen were handy in the next raft if the barbecue got out of hand...



This was the HMS Victory - spot Nelson if you can...



Now, there is audience participation. Many of the thousands of riverbank onlookers who had braved the cold and had a bacon roll and a coffee in polystyrene cup had brought flour bombs to chuck at the rafters (not us, obviously). This is hilariously funny until they start chucking them back, not differentiating between the guilty and the innocent, and then sending oarfuls and, in some cases, bucketfuls, of water crowdwards aswell...



...and in rare cases (not joking), baked beans came our way...



...and then off they went down the river towards Cromford...



...until Boxing Day next year!

* Finished The Da Vinci Code well before the Evans Spoiler! Kept wanting Wincey Willis to appear and stop the clock. And Velma out of Scooby-Doo is a better cryptographer than Sophie Neveu.

Is it Christmas yet...?

Well, I think it might be. Here is my evidence...



Yes, it's the final candle on the Blue Peter Advent Crown.

I can hardly believe that they are still making it. But they are. I suspect the quality isn't as high as when Val, Pete and John made it, but it's nice to see these traditions continued.

Especially by my brother-in-law, Roger, who has his unique take on these things...



Despite the fact that Blue Peter is now presented (seemingly) by Poor Man's Liberty-X (three women with their midriffs out and two vacuous blokes), the Christmas episode is reassuringly timeless...

• Christmas Cards from Viewers (although I suspect as the years go by, they are showing all of them, not just a selection...)
• Brass band playing medley of carols
• Margaret Parnell Make ("I'm using double-sided sticky-tape, for speed...")

• Cast of West End musical (in this case, Mary Poppins) performing in studio, all wearing Blue Peter badges
• Presents for the pets

• Christmas Appeal Totaliser (done up like a mobile phone in a passing mention for all-things-modern...)
• Nod to religion

I think Biddy Baxter may be dead but, probably by retaining editorship from beyond the grave, still seems to be ensuring some degree of quality.

The same cannot be said for (the immediately following) Newsround, the title music of which now sounds like a bad ringtone. *

And if you're wondering how I have time to do this in-depth analysis of festive children's TV...

1. "Ah've finished all me main shoppin', ah've only bits to do..." © Peter Kay, Paul O'Grady Show tonight
2. I have started reading The Da Vinci Code because I think I should and because everyone else has, have got to page 88 and couldn't really care less about the other 504. Please can someone tell me what all the fuss is about?

* Text NEWS to 86543 for your own version. Textseses cost £1.50 each. We will send you 2 textseses a day forever and you will not be able to stop them. Please tell a parent or guardian if you are under 18, as when the bill comes through, they will want to kill you. Please also tell someone over 18 if you think the past particple of "to text" is "text".

Hello Uncle Ian...!

I finally got to meet Zoe yesterday.

Here I am, holding her hand and leering in at her (I don't think she found it too traumatic, (a) because she has to put up with everyone, including my Dad (in background), leering in at her and (b) she had her eyes shut).*



She's back on the tiniest oxygen mask in the world and has a feeding tube in, but is doing very well. She drank 13ml of milk while I was there last night - well, she had it syringed down the tube by my sister with one hand through each of the holes in the incubator like one of those games off the Crystal Maze.

She's linked up to about 20 different hospital playstations...



...which keep beeping and clicking, but within perfectly acceptable limits, apparently. If you are not used to that happening though, it's bloody scary!

Raced up north yesterday to see her, and now have several days of lying on the sofa watching naff ITV 9.25am sub-Disney cartoons about puppies or mice that save the world in a Christmassy fashion. Bliss.

*Sorry about all those embedded parentheses...