I have just received this:
Dear Mr Scurra
I very much enjoyed your email to James Arbuthnot.
Yours sincerely
The Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP
Tedious, ungrammatical, unoriginal and tasteless crap from someone old enough to know better.
Dear Mr Scurra
I very much enjoyed your email to James Arbuthnot.
Yours sincerely
The Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP
Dear Mr Arbuthnot,
I was shocked, stunned and not a little saddened to learn, courtesy of the BBC television programme “Have I Got News For You”, that Ann Widdecombe has a cat that bears your name.
Would you please assure me and my fellow constituents that we are not going to be subject to an unpleasant news splash in the Sunday People or some such publication in the coming weeks, which would bring opprobrium on the inhabitants of North East Hampshire? I need hardly remind you that this is Jane Austen country. Even when Ms Austen wishes to shock us episodes such as Lydia Bennet’s indiscretion are not explicitly described.
If you were fortunate enough to spare a few minutes away from your busy schedule to view the television programme in question, you would have witnessed Ms Widdecombe calling out “Arbuthnot” in a manner not dissimilar to that used by the heroines in the genre commonly referred to (but not in North East Hampshire) as “bodice rippers”. I had to set aside the organic vegan eccles cake that I had been enjoying up to that point, and urgently have a little lie down.
I shall be posting this missive on the Kingsley web log, and on my own much more widely read (it has one reader) web journal.
I look forward to your urgent and completely rebuttal of any inferences that may be drawn from this serious and disappointing revelation.
Yours eagerly, (although not in the Widdecombe sense)
V. Scurra.
I am pleased to report that I received this reply:Dear Mr Scurra,
I am sorry, but I can give you no such assurance. Ann Widdecombe (I am not sure I share your courage in calling her “Ms”) and I have been in discussions about this cat for some years now, and she keeps me regularly updated about its progress, but I have never met it, and I cannot answer for its behaviour. If, for example, it were found doing awful things in the bushes with neighbouring females, or began to slaughter all the nearby wildlife, I would have to bear the reflected publicity with such fortitude as I could muster.
Or perhaps you were suggesting something more? Again, I am not sure I share your courage.
Yours sincerely,
Once you have carefully examined the birthday photograph album of Charles, who has reached the age of 59 without once having a clue about what the fuck was going on, and, by the way, don’t be shocked by the startling news that he once visited New Zealand and once had a beard, as far as I can tell he did not have the beard when he visited New Zealand, that would be too fucking exciting, wouldn’t it? I mean, I had a beard once, (it was hardly worthy of the name, being light in colour and very sparse), but I would not have dared take it to
Apologies, I got a bit over excited there. What I meant to construct was:
Once you have carefully examined the birthday photograph album of Charles, who has reached the age of 59 without once having a clue about what the fuck was going on, you can read all about the exciting research done by Garrett Lisi (this one has lots of anagrams “girlie tarts”, “is larger tit”, “girl arse tit”), who has done some careful experiments in sub atomic physics while surfing on Lake Tahoe. Mr Lisi has a doctorate (the subject is not specified), and is not possessed of a surplus of hair, but appears to be some sort of hippyish figure who has had a major realisation after his third tab of mescaline since he last slept. Imagine Neil from the Young Ones “Hey, guys, listen, no listen, I’ve just had this really cool idea about the theory of everything, right.” Or in Gazza’s own words:
"My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," he tells New Scientist. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'"
Very much the reaction of the Buddha when he attained enlightenment, except he probably thought it in Pali or Sanskrit.
Even the normally sober correspondent of the Telegraph finds words difficult to manage:
E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional.
There is a lesson here, be careful about reading this stuff, you might start talking bollocks any minute. Only strict discipline has sustained the clarity of my writing.
I have enclosed a picture of E8. Those of you familiar with the effects of ingesting lysergic acid diethylamide or its cousins will begin to understand the processes that Garrett has undergone.
All of this, if it is accepted by our deluded friends in the scientific community, will disprove “string theory”, as being too complicated. If they had paid more attention to this blog they would already know that. See my appraisal of string theory in a previous posting.
I FUCKING TOLD YOU.
Mr Lisi goes on to say:
"I think our universe is this beautiful shape."
Yes, Mr Lisi. Never mind the fucking shape, the universe is beautiful, and if these silly fuckers stopped trying to explain it and started to experience it, then not only would our children not have to sit through arse numbingly boring physics lessons, but there might be a tad more happiness in the world.
PS - you'll like this one, it only just occurred to me as I was passing on the good news to my fellow villagers on the Kingsblog. E8, as in "E8 too many fucking mushrooms".Most of you will by now be fully conversant with the sad news courtesy of my friends at BBC online that physicists have started to poke their wart-bedecked and misshapen noses into the world of computing.
One had hoped that by now they would have all blown themselves upon in their dismal experiment in the sewers of
We are now faced with the prospect of replacing the good old “bit” with quantum bits or “qubits”.
You will all be aware that any phrase that contains the word “quantum” is highly suspicious, and that the word quantum is virtually a synonym for “bollocks”.
Those of us (aMToNW) who learned the art of computer programming in the days when you actually had to understand the code in order to get it to work, will have a great fondness for binary code and the simple logic that underlies it. We are now faced with the bollocks bit, or “bobbit” (insert genital mutilation joke here):
A qubit can also represent a "1" or a "0" but crucially can be both at the same time - known as a superposition.
This is a delight. We will now have to go back over our work of the last 30 or so years, and replace all of the “if, then, else” loops with “if, perhaps, sometimes”. Those of you with a jocular disposition will by now be say “well, that’s how the computer that produces my bank statement already works”, and holding your sides until someone comes along with a staple gun.
For those of you who think that I have a silly name, may I introduce Professor Artur Ekert – seems to be a few consonants short of an anagram – who is keen on this baloney. He refers to “massively parallel processing”. I have heard of this before, and even understand something of what is meant by it, alas. My understanding, however, is in spite of rather than because of the mangling of the language. Lines are either parallel or not. You twat.
Professor Stan Williams of HP has a slightly (only slightly) more sensible suggestion, using photons instead of electrons (just join in for a minute and pretend to believe in them), or light instead of electricity. So, dispense with your mouse and keyboard, and dust off the Aldiss lamp in the loft in order to optimise input.
Any room in Grantham for physicists, Reg?
Many of you (aMToNW) reacted with kindness to my story from childhood memory some time ago. Thank you for all your messages of support.
But there is always some fucker who has to go one better, isn’t there?
Nothing like this ever happened to me. Nothing like this ever happened at my school. It is all so unfair. God, you are a bastard.
There have been laments and expressions of disappointments over at Tom’s journal now that he has returned from his adventure, because it is anticipated that his excellent travel log has ended. This is indeed the case. Unless he has been smitten by the thrill of travel, the next twelve months are unlikely to see him venture further than Moretonhampstead to stock up on his organic corn flour.
Perhaps I, in my humble way, might attempt to fill a tiny percentage of the gap that has been left on the internet. I do not claim to have the insights and mastery of prose that Tom has, but there is a need and who am I to shirk my duty?
This morning I crossed the county boundary into
Coming back into Hampshire, one is reminded of why those of us lucky enough to live here rarely find it necessary to leave for entertainment. Within a couple of miles of passing the county checkpoint, one is reminded that one is in “Jane Austen Country”, there is the internationally renowned “Bird World”, and the Forestry Commission Research Station at Alice Holt. A giddy mix of culture, nature and science.
The reminder that we are in Jane Austen Country is for the benefit of visitors from