So here we are, officially in winter. The clocks have gone back, daylight starts well after getting-up time and runs out before work finishes. Doom and depression are all around, but your reporter is not downhearted - the Amnesty weekend festival in Richmond was brilliant, organised by those extremely nice Wupa Dupa people (basically an extended Semble) and all went very smoothly. Bumped into some old mates at the Martha Tilston gig at the Komedia, all of which were agreed that Carrie Tree stole the show (just). Both acts were stunning, but does Martha really need that many musicians? However brilliant The Woods (Martha's backing musicians) are (and they all are) her voice and songs simply don't need lush arrangements.

I'm off to the wilds of Romney Marsh for a few days, there are a couple of jobs to do on the old van. Fortunately I'll be working with the superhuman Matt who is getting his Dodge 50 bus ready for their annual trek down to the south of Spain (and possibly Morocco this year). It may be winter, but I will be working on springs...

Deadbeat Science.

My father was a very wise man, and it is his take on reality which is the basis for deadbeat Science. Here are a couple of examples (I don't know if he actually originated all these, but that's where I got them from).

Sod's Law - everyone knows this, but Dad told me that actually it is three laws,
Law 1: 'If it can go wrong it will' Everyone knows this. Dad took the idea further, analysing bitter experience to add:-
Law 2: 'When it goes wrong, it will be in the worst way possible' and:-
Law 3: 'In fact, it already has gone wrong, you just don't know about it yet'

Deadbeat Perpetual Motion Machine:
This is based on two well known facts - toast always falls butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet. So if a piece of toast is strapped to the back of a cat, (buttered side up) and the cat is then thrown out of the window, the toast/cat construction must revolve endlessly in mid-air.

The very Instructive Mollusc:
This mollusc (a whelk, I think, but I never listened as attentively as I should) has two phases to its life. The first is a larval phase, in which it has inefficient, flappy fin-like structures and a rudimentary brain to run them. Using this equipment it wobbles inelegantly around until it finds a nice rock in a good nutriment stream. At this point it glues itself down and is never going to move, ever again. Its fin-like things become feeders, straining the current for nutriment, but it doesn't need a brain any more. So it eats it. My dad told me that people are just the same - they find the music/politics/values they're happy with, surround themselves with like-minded friends; and before they know it they're stuck to a rock and they've eaten their brains. And he was right - I meet such people every day.

Cheers

Deadbeat