Newbold Street: The Arrival

I don't mean to brag, but I have a lot of friends. Unfortunately, I'm a near-adult human with trivialities, frivolities, a mess of principals and an organisation of whims, as are we all; thus, each friendship is heinously complex, relying on the personalities, commitments, geographical location, disposition and a plethora of other properties, including but not limited to gender, of all concerned parties. These complications are what make everyday so interesting; how bored would you be if every person really were a faceless brick-in-the-wall?

Despite the variety in detail, every friendship is principally the same: two people who mutually enjoy one another's company and care for one another, mutually. This lengthy prologue, then, is simply a declaration that many a person cares about me and me about each of them, which, again, is not a mere bragging exercise. It'd be a complicated and time-consuming endeavour to contact everybody I'd call a pal in turn; most would be busy at the time of calling, were I to make the necessary century of phone calls; my love of lengthy texts is likely not shared, nor is SMS really the medium for such an endeavour; letters are a little more direct, appropriate and a little less intrusive, but sending a forest in parts to mostly unknown addresses is just plain silly; email matches letters for the lack of intrusion and the availability of words with which to express myself, but its informality and the frequent disregard with which people receive emails strikes me that it would not be such a great medium for informing all caring buddies that I'm alive and well. In fact, some aforementioned complications are in such severity that direct contact is not strictly the best approach. What, then, should be the medium for my communication?

As you're no doubt aware, this is the chosen medium. It's personal, far-reaching, non-intrusive; its apparent formality depends upon my register. It's perfect. With this prologue thankfully complete, I'll begin my message.

 

Saturday gone, I arrived in the quaint and royal Royal Leamington Spa. What makes it royal? I don't know. There's a tourist information office a two-minute walk away, so I may ask them. Alternatively, I could ask Wikipedia, but Jimmy Wales' Guide to the Galaxy is not as friendly, human or even as sentient as a tourist information office person. It has been raining pretty much since I got here. I left my wallet on the train. I've moved my stuff into my room, including my bicycle Amanda and my unnamed record player, which is currently blasting Dark Side's beautiful finale Eclipse. Quel chanson! Lily the Japanese peace lily is over by the window. A whiteboard, a second monitor, a lamp, a bed, a bookshelf brimming with ingenious narrative: they're all here and keeping me happy. I even have a set of scales which sends an electrical signal through my body and uses this to calculate my percentage body fat and percentage body water. I'm all gadgeted-up.

We don't yet have internet. To answer your question, I'm using the mobile internet from my phone – named Prometheus – and its "WiFi Hotspot" capabilities. Like I said, I'm all gadgeted-up. Virgin Media are sending their dogsbodies round on Thursday, so hopefully Prometheus can rest then, and cease having his liver perpetually eaten by the vulture of my laptop. The boiler boils hot water, but neglects the radiators. I have a fierce collection of one whole jacket/jumper thingy, so I'm warm and snug. Actually, I'm currently sat in my boxers; even for a Geordie, I wear little in the winter. So, the heating is failing to bother me while its inexistence is saving me money on that first dreaded bill. We have water, a brand new bathroom, a gorgeous kitchen and a nice big yard. We've got everything a growing boy needs, so hopefully I'll be six foot tall when I return to Whitley Bay at Christmas.

This is perhaps the most structured thing I've ever written. I once wrote a paragraph which told the story about a witch who placed a curse on a sports hall, then decided I'd hit a dead end, put the entire paragraph in quotation marks and appended "Or so the legend goes." I then continued a fruitful description of invigilators and of my desire to use the toilet, frequently making references to that story to make it look deliberate. That was my English GCSE and I got an A for that paper. I would sincerely love to know exactly what the examiner thought; I especially wonder whether the non-gender-specific he thought my shark-jumping witch was deliberate. Anyway, that cacophony of imaginative drivel was accidentally structured, in the end; much like this. I've covered my stuff, the house's stuff, and now it's time to discuss the people who live here.

They're all smelly and I hate them. Ha, just kidding! There's Josh, Mike, Hugh, James and Roland. To put it another way, there's Roland, James, Hugh, Mike and Josh. Hopefully none is too offended by the order. In any case, they're all lovely people, and besides them, we seem to have already become the social centre of Warwick University, which is fantastic because it took best part of three terms to get more than one person to hike to the far-off land of Lakeside in which we – Josh, Hugh and I – resided last year.

It would hardly be a blogpost of mine if I didn't throw in some cynicism, and so I have to voice my frightful opinion that University will be shit this year. I can do mathematics fine. I hit 77 last year, so I'm fairly certain I can maintain a First for the length of my degree. However, the University is a massive trek, and though I had a lot of fun on campus last year, there's only lectures to be had on University land this year. The saving grace is, of course, living off-campus. Last year, the University was all-encompassing. We were stuck in a bubble, cut off from society. How the blazes anyone is supposed to think about a future in a society with which they have no connection is beyond me. I think I just explained recidivism in a sentence.

We're off-campus this year. It's fantastic. I live in a home, not an office-block. That's exactly the point. It's a bloody wonderful house, but it's so much more than that. This is home.

Photograph

A Quick Edit

Before today's wondrous post, I'd like to plug my new blog. It may be best you don't read the first and only post if you haven't read The Great Gatsby, but nonetheless, my bibliocentric new blog can be found at the pretentiously titled Fire Or Freshness. Enjoy, and pray comment if you've something to say on The Great Gatsby or subsequent books. Anyway, let's go. The following is my opinion and not a statement of fact. If you like photographs, then say some kind words in a comment or go take a few. I like photographs, but there are things I dislike about photographs.

Photograph

I've remembered what I dislike about photographs: they're too impersonal. Yes, they're very clever and I congratulate the inventors of every last piece of the current technology. You've done well. An SLR camera can take pictures that appear more real than real images. However, I quite like real images. As crisp as dewdrops on a leaf look when the focus is right, when there's incredible depth of perception and a lens several times larger than my own, it's still not a dewdrop. As Magritte astutely observed of his painting of a pipe, "ceci n'est pas un pipe." It cannot be held, cannot be stuffed, cannot be smoked. It is an image of a pipe.

Posed photographs are even worse. I've just flicked through a mental scrapbook of photographs and memories, comparing the smiles of a given person in each. The memories win. When viewing a posed photograph, with everybody staring intently into the same spot, grinning with the wrong muscles, occasionally succeeding with creasing the skin around the eyes, am I the only one who is a tiny bit afraid that these predators are about to attack me? A dozen faked friendly faces are staring at me intently, frozen in their position with far too much intensity in their gaze. A painter can at least filter out some of the oddity of a human statue; an instantaneous capture of light cannot account for the absurdity of a held pose.

An action shot is a little better, but even then, they're mostly unkind. You have a man in back of shot, midway through a change of facial expression, with distorted features akin to those of Victor Frankenstein's creature. In the foreground, a temporary hand gesture appears to be held, now abstracting that to levels of absurdity. Half-open mouths and inappropriate surprise, or a fake smile clear in the record but unnoticed at the time, all preserved for the scrutiny of men who were never there.

Holiday snaps? What are they? "Look at the fun I was having when you were driving in the rain!" Yes, except you weren't really having fun. You had time to pose for a photograph.

My protests aside, I far too often pause while viewing something incredible or looking at something beautiful just to share it with someone else, but at those moments I only further believe in what I've just said. I'm stood on the beach, looking out at across a sea lit up by a full moon and a billion stars. I can take a photograph, sure, but there's no way I can capture that beauty. I can get a close approximation.

Maybe taking an easel and a canvas to the beach with me is the solution. Perhaps a poem would better encapsulate the moment. I doubt it. At least, however, with those art forms, the masses are well aware that they're getting a snapshot, laden with the prejudice of the artist. It's curious, then, that a photograph – the most literal snapshot of them all – can so often be mistaken for a slice of reality. I have two eyes. I have depth perception. I can move my head; I can change my perspective of something in reality. A photograph is a great approximation, but it is infuriatingly nothing to do with me. The man in my memories ceases to be me about six months after the event. The man in my photographs ceases to be me instantaneously.

Open Your Eyes, Look At The Day

I woke up, rolled out of bed, did nothing with a comb and didn't catch a bus at all because the nearest bus stop to my house is about 20 yards from the newsagents in which I work from 6 until 9 every morning at the moment. Sundays are the worst of days because paperboys will invariably cancel and the Sunday Times takes a large crane to construct. I'm hoping to get a new job with more pay and I'll be okay. There was just enough time after my shift for breakfast, before the ever reliable Bob picked me up in the Bobsleigh. Disappointingly, it's actually a car, but off we headed, rowing-club bound.

I was livid with myself for failing to complete 2000m on an Ergo, especially since I'm rowing 25km on the 29th July, which is three weeks from now for those of you who are mathematically challenged. That's the Great Tyne Row, starting at Newburn and ending in Tynemouth. I did it last year when I was much fitter, so the worst affected area of my body was my bottom. This year, I expect to ache all over. Following the aforementioned pathetic 6-minute stint on a rowing machine, I moved some weights up and down in various different motions, which apparently builds various difficult muscle groups. If you're interested in that sort of thing, Google phrases like "shoulder press" and "bicep curl." In the end, I was quite contented with my workout and I left under blue skies in pain. More of an ache, really.

After frivolities and workout-ities in ye olde clubhouse, it was time for some delicious refreshment. As ever, I wandered through Tynemouth to that most lovely of chocolatier's, whose staff are delightful, if I can be so biased as to say so. White hot chocolate trumps the regular kind in every respect of which I can think. That is to say, it is more delicious and creamy and there are no other criteria for hot chocolates in my experience. My lovely friend Becky was working, fortunately, so we had our first chat in nearly three months and the entire trip to the chocolate factory was a pleasant one, with not a fizzy lifting drink in sight.

I vacated sooner than I'd have liked, but I had plans. A plan to travel to Royal Quays in search of a new bicycle failed. Now, Nexus are malevolent, psychic and have a vendetta against me. So, instead of travelling by Metro to Royal Quays, I wandered about the market at Tynemouth Station, eventually buying the third instalment in my vinyl collection of my favourite albums. Led Zeppelin IV now makes a triumvirate of musical bliss with Rumours and Wish You Were Here. I have in mind three more albums to acquire. The incredibly astute amongst you will know them simply by reading this post. Mr Perry, I'm looking at you in particular. Anyway, a bit more wandering around and a sick realisation that I had to walk home in time for the Wimbledon Men's Final ensued.

The walk was enjoyable, though tiring after the weights and rowing and wandering about a market. And as I wound on down the road, I listened to Rumours as is my wont, my mind quizzical of the pataphysical, just as I like it. I arrived home with ten minutes to spare before the brilliant display of sporting talent on Centre Court. The result came as expected, but the play from Andy Murray was phenomenal. Unfortunately for him, Federer is the greatest player — on grass at the very least — of all time. To quote Forrest Gump: "that's all I have to say about that."

In conclusion, I had a great day. It was filled with stuff that I like, including the roast dinner I didn't mention, and I thoroughly enjoyed my second Sunday back in the land of a very old and mostly destroyed castle that we still call New.

Second Best

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who gave me advice, sent kind words or even just took the time to read my previous post. I cannot begin to describe how much you all helped me rescue myself from the abyss in which I had spent far too much time dwelling.

I actually had other thoughts I'd like to put into words, so, without further ado, here are today's ramblings.

I'm a writer. I love words. I enjoy making riverine sentences that flow from source ideas through meandering phrases before making their final point at sea. I'm also a mathematician. I'll see a "735" on a number plate and spend a second or two finding its prime factor representation. I'm a botanist and I have to know every tree's every detail. I'm a physicist forever knowing my actions to be limited by Newton's laws. I'm a chemist, picturing the structures of each listed ingredient on a toothpaste tube. I'm a pianist tinkering on the ivories. I'm a politician representing his people. I'm a chef perfecting his recipe.

Granted, I'm not many of the above in any great way. I'm yet to contribute to the world of mathematics, so cannot count myself among the mathematicians. I've not published a novel and so I'm not a writer. I don't work in a restaurant. I cannot remember winning an election of any sort, except as a class representative in sixth form. Nobody ran against me, according to my memory. The point which I have made incredibly poorly is this:

I cannot be all of me at once.

To devote oneself entirely to a cause is to sacrifice any loyalty to any other cause. This is a concept which I could not accept for a very long time. Now, I know that I can't be the best at everything; realistically, if being the best in one field matters to me, I would sacrifice for it any time which I would have otherwise spent on becoming great in another field. As it happens, there is nothing in the world which I care about enough to disregard everything else. For the first time in my life, I can say that I don't mind being second best.

Confession

I'm so alone. I worry that nobody genuinely likes me; I worry nobody cares about me. Often, I question whether people want me to go away, to disappear, to be elsewhere or simply not to exist at all. I am terrible at reaching out to people. I alienate old friends and idealise new ones, hoping that perhaps they will be able to cure me of whatever mental ailment I have. Even now, I can't properly express anything in terms that seem human. When given the chance to express or to explain myself, I fall silent. I fail to ask anyone for help, ever. For some idiotic reason, my childhood self decided he never needed any help from anyone, ever; he decided that there was nothing he couldn't do; he decided there was no problem he couldn't fix. Well, I can't fix me. I hate being me, but I don't know how to be anything else.

Revolution

I've been thinking a lot recently about the word "revolution." When I say recently, I mean while I made toast just now. When a disc revolves around a point, it makes a "revolution." When peasants revolt, their movement is a "revolution." When John Lennon makes a haunting sound collage, he calls it "Revolution 9," which is unfortunately stuck in my head as a result of this little introduction. Moving on&hellp;

Other words of these two roots include "revolting" and "revolver." The former word can describe something quite disgusting; the latter word can describe something quite disgusting. Ho ho ho. I'm not a big fan of guns. It does, however, strike me as a little odd — if not revelatory — that two words describing any general thing that causes a change have come to describe something as disgusting and name a weapon. Is change disgusting? Does a revolution rely on weapons? Certainly, in any revolution there are those supporting the old ways, most of whom would view the new age as disgusting. In the case of the revolver, obviously the term describes its mechanics and not its function or idealistic symbolism.

Several other common cases that call "to revolve" to order strike me as interesting, which likely means you should stop reading. You haven't? Brave soul… Anyway, one such case is: To think the world revolves around oneself It describes megalomania or perhaps simply narcissism — to be described as one, I'd be offended; for the other, I'd agree — but the connotation of being the cause to every effect is one which both frightens and consoles me. I'd rather not be to blame for every bad thing that happens; I'd gladly be told that I'm in complete control of my own life. Guilt is annoying; free will is my favourite.

It also conjures memories of ideas raised in Mostly Harmless — the last book in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series — and conceptualised by the lovely German word "umwelt." It is the idea that everything in one's world is shaped by one's own experiences: the universe is unique to the viewer. I rather like this idea. It means I don't have to share my universe with things that I don't like. I can also define my own meaning, morals and rules. It's somewhat an extension of "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," which once again is an idea of which I am greatly fond. Why would two quite distinct creatures have the same ideal of beauty? Even if something can be described as objectively beautiful, I simply take that to mean that, on average, people find it subjectively beautiful.

I've rather strayed from my original etymological discussion or approximation thereof. I'm not too bothered, though. I count this as a moderately interesting post, which is a step in the right direction from whatever miserable tripe I spat into prose last time. I did mean to get onto the idea that nothing would ever change without something "revolting" happening to provoke it, but I've so little to say on that matter that I'd rather leave myself open to queries regarding perception than, as it were, interception^†.

^†I think we could count the Arab Spring and other revolutions as "interceptions" of power. I like using words that share a root but differ in prefixes. What are you going to do about it?

I'm Always Miserable When I Write These

My little brother recently emailed me to detail his distress at having read my previous post so many times. As a courtesy to him, I write this. So, in a way, this blogpost is dedicated to my little brother, Owen.

I distinctly remember injecting zero work into my GCSEs and performing rather well. In my AS year, I upped my game somewhat to the most minimal level of work required to hit scores of 90%, and I slacked from this in my A2 year only to the detriment of Physics and French in which I received an A grade and a B grade respectively. In the interests of modesty, I would like to introduce my inability to swim. Today, however, in my first year of a maths degree, I've discovered that my coasting capabilities have reached their limits. I have no doubt that I could pass through to second year with minimum effort, but that feels rather like a waste of all the effort I put into not putting any effort into things in the past.

Should I fail to do better than simply not failing, I will be most disappointed with myself for at least five minutes before finding something better to do with my time than kick myself for not bending to society's silly rules. There are a great deal many things about which I care deeply, most of which have names and the remainder are either abstract concepts or the most simple of items. For instance, I care deeply about my ability to write, and, for that matter, to read. There is no qualification in existence which can aid my prowess in these fields. Similarly, I enjoy cooking and eating, neither of which requires a university degree. Intelligent conversation is my opium and I need not a first in maths in order to stimulate myself so.

I've actually bored myself with this.

My attention span is somewhat at a deficit.

I must apologise to Owen for dedicating to him perhaps my worst post since that time I attempted to write a short story in five minutes. I have many an interesting subject rolling around my head, some of which present much greater problems than those presented by my mundane ogre of a degree. They are trifles and thus the most intriguing of things. None are so easily communicable and yet all are decidedly commonplace. I cannot concentrate on such boring concepts as continuous functions or linear transformations while my brain has much deeper abysses into which to plummet and darker swamps in which to frolic.

I seem to have come full circle, or even made a breakthrough. I think that is the difference between then and now. During my school years, nothing was important to me, thus I could conceptualise utterly useless chemistry and brilliantly bogus physics without once having my mind wander. I'd now so much rather be preoccupied with thoughts of family and friends than by equations and translations.

Just a quick post-script: I'm actually somewhat happy at the moment. I've been great for days, this is just some downtime. I only ever blog during my downtime, it would seem. When I'm next happy, I may do a shorter, happier post.

Exile

I have never been so upset to be leaving a place than I am to be leaving the northeast later today. Sure, I'm dreading the exams neither for which I've prepared nor about which I've convinced myself to care, but they are not nearly colossal enough to strike immobilising fear upon my mind; only one such experience springs to mind, and it is far detached from the world of academia.

It also doesn't help that Sunday happens to be my sister's birthday. She at least pretends not to care, but it does slightly annoy me that the schedule has woven itself so tightly around the pivot of being a nuisance. That rather sets the theme for all my grumbles at being called back to university and my duties as another brick in the wall. I don't believe I wasted a moment over these holidays and yet I regret not being able to do so much more.

Nonetheless, I spend this weekend in Cambridge, and, save a few exams, I can bathe in the luscious waters of no work, regimes or responsibilities for ten weeks thereafter. It's not all doom and gloom. I used to enjoy Maths, especially exams; perhaps there is yet scope to rekindle that enjoyment. It would be the one thing to fully restore my faith in this degree if I could at least remember why it was I thought I'd enjoy it.

Like I say, Cambridge this weekend with, to choose the most apt superlative, the most entertaining of my flatmates, followed by two days hard graft, an exam, then a Pre-Avengers marathon amongst friends. It's not quite being by the seaside, but nothing ever was.

Discovery

I wanted to break tradition and document my day. I can feel your raised eyebrows reverberating back into what is to you the past and to me the present. I will dispel such quizzical looks with some hairy liberations of my own, albeit proverbial ones.

A trifling fancy gripped me this morning. I have so much gotten bored of being housebound each day that earlier this week I wandered to Newcastle with no purpose but to kill time and left the Grainger Market that day with two packets of biscuits, then proceeded to have a walk along the promenade at Whitley Bay. It was peaceful, enjoyable somewhat, but not nearly as brilliant as today.

Today, I prised my little brother from the clutches of my PS3. We were bound for the Discovery Museum, and discover we did.

Where to start? Let's start at the very beginning: a very good place to start. The wondrous propellers shown above are the work of Charles Algernon Parsons of Ryton, which lies some 7 miles upstream of the Tyne Bridge. Parsons invented the steam turbine, and later developed turbine-driven ships, the first of which was the Turbinia, shown below as she currently sits in the Discovery Museum.

Turbinia, who was completed in 1894, demonstrated Parsons' ingenuity and was by far and away the fastest ship in the world at the time, both due to its knife-like bow and novel use of turbines. Setting a new standard for steamships, the Blue Riband prize for crossing the Atlantic quickly fell into ownership of ships using Parsons' technology. At around the same time, the International Mercantile Marine Co. was setting up a monopoly that was to cruise liners as NewsCorp is to media, which included the White Star Line, of which you will have no doubt heard. To claim a victory over this conglomerate, Cunard commissioned a new range of liners, larger and faster than ever before, using Parsons' brilliant engineering.

The Mauretania. Isn't she beautiful? Cunard needed the greatest shipyards in the world, and two of them at that. A merger between Tyneside shipyards Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson was necessary in order to construct a ship larger than the world had ever seen before. Mauretania held the Blue Riband between 1909 and 1929, though not without a well-documented, ill-fated attempt by White Star to beat Cunard by taking a shortcut with a slightly slower class of ships, their Olympic line. Just as Mauretania dwarfed its sister Lusitania and later comrade Aquitania, the Titanic has fame far beyond that of the Olympic and the Britannic. This would still be the case were she successful in her challenge. To return to a less tragic and commercially exploited topic, Newcastle innovated and implemented one of the greatest developments to fluvial transport to date.

What's this? A locomotive? In fact, it's Locomotion No 1. With this engine, George and Robert Stephenson sped up the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825. The duo improved the existing railways for horse-drawn wagons for the heavier mechanical machines, first in the North East, then in Liverpool and Manchester — which opened the floodgates for passenger rail services — and then continuing to supervise the construction of railways all around the UK. The British Empire then carried these innovations across the world.

That's not even everything yet. Not nearly. Have you ever used a light bulb? Thomas Edison may well have displayed his version at the Chicago World Fair, but neither he nor Joseph Wilson Swan of Tyneside ever knew who achieved success first. As ingenious as the pair were, they merged their companies rather than compete or burn their fortune in court under the name EdiSwan. The photograph above shows a replica of Swan's 1878 bulb, with the nearest to perfect vacuum ever, a carbon filament and a rather lovely shape, as well as a reflection of the flash from my camera.

Speaking of cameras, this is an early home camera. It uses bromide paper: yet another brainchild of Joseph Swan. Though lenses were much altered across the years, and different methods for the development of photographs introduced, the majority of film never strayed far from the original bromide paper. Only the recent surge in digital photography has superseded cameras of a similar class to those that used Swan's paper.

Seriously, Newcastle. I am in awe.

Home Comforts

I'm happy. I'm genuinely happy, which makes me sad. I'm home now, having travelled incognito the night prior to Mother's Day by a train journey during which I made a new friend instead of, as is my preference, chancing upon one of my oldest. Nonetheless, I am very much happy in my current surroundings and this makes me very sad indeed.

The phenomenon is not unlike the happiness I felt last summer. After A-Levels, I had more than enough spare time to do everything I'd wanted to do for years. This just so happened to be nothing. I rowed 25 kilometres down the Tyne, raising £90 for a local children's hospice in the process, read several novels and novellas which I had meant to read for quite some time and I even earned some dough working in a local shop. The void between school and university was a most blissful one; beloved, as ever, knew nought.

The dawn of university brought with it more novelties and new faces than I could possibly communicate, but given that this would be the case for almost anyone, it shouldn't be too difficult for most readers to sympathise with the gravitas of such a situation. As first term rolled on, I became ever more attached – even infatuated – with my peers. I find it ludicrous to suppose that I may have ever been attached to such depressing surroundings as those of Warwick University, but perhaps my infrequent jogs by Lakeside's lake and my initial attraction to Leamington did something to capture my imagination. Come Christmas, I was somewhat distraught to be separated from what I considered my home. Upon returning, the rose-tinted spectacles of the opening sequence had been washed away by the tides of winter. Despite my companions ever brilliant, the place itself and the feeling of isolation it placed upon me greatly grated my spirits.

I had awaited a change – a revert – of scenery with great anticipation. I knew Tyneside would restore my geniality, and she did not disappoint. Furthermore, I have spent such great times in the company of old friends that I query why I ever believed moving away from home – as I know believe it to be – to be anything other than misplaced adventurism. I am happy here; it makes me sad to know that, like the summer before it, this inconsequential playtime must end abruptly and all too soon.

I miss my flatmates, my fellow mathematicians, and all the insane bunch of film nerds and literature geeks with whom I spend a curious amount of my time. I also know that I cannot postpone the final examinations of the year, and that I must do myself justice in them. With that in mind, I have taken to doing some revision and resolved that returning to the land of labour from here, my world of whimsy, is a necessity. I need only survive three more years in the anus of Britain. Next year looks to be more endurable: living in a town, not a township.

Alcohol, Cannabis, Money and Mortality

I have not for a very long time felt so contested against an issue than I do against the idiotic proposal of a minimum alcohol price per unit.

Having been assaulted by a drunken moron within a few hundred yards of my home, I'm more than qualified to comment on the effects of alcohol abuse. Raising the price of such a despicable substance is in no way a solution to the problem. Raising the price of such a despicable substance simply earns the government more money. I'm all for that. If they can fuel their strange nonsensical crusades by penalising those who drink cheap alcoholic drinks, then sure, go ahead, but I'd like them to admit that this is their aim. Under no circumstances will this save lives. If someone is hellbent on drinking themselves first into oblivion and then later to death, they will manage it eventually. Money is immaterial to the dead man. Besides which, saving lives is not the duty of the government. If it is, then why would the government move to cannibalise the NHS?

I have a much more elegant solution to the falling levels of sobriety across Britain: the legalisation of cannabis. As an alternative depressant to alcohol, it is much less damaging to the user, much less likely to invoke violence and has never been known to cause any death, ever. Furthermore, legalising the substance allows the implementation of taxes upon it. This could easily earn HM Treasury more than raising the price of alcohol ever would. It would also limit funding to organised crime somewhat, as would the legalisation of prostitution, which could also be taxed. As I understand it, Köln makes quite some revenue from taxing prostitution, legalisation of which would also render safer the lives of prostitutes. Nonetheless, I was discussing the advantages of legalising cannabis, which are manifold.

Though more intoxicating in a mental sense, cannabis causes less damage to the body than tobacco and is less addictive than nicotine. Of course, smoking cannabis on a 15-minute break might have a greater effect on productivity than smoking tobacco, but workplaces generally forbid the consumption of alcohol whilst working on the job, so there should be no problem with forbidding the consumption of cannabis for employers. The same is true of transport, and public places may well still carry a smoking ban that extends to cannabis, though I cannot see any problem with consumption of special brew or spacecakes in a pub or licensed café, for instance. Since all of these products can be taxed and charges implemented for the relevant licenses, the government stands to rake in funds for its activities — the National Health Service, for example — through legalising cannabis.

Whilst I'm on the subject of legalising things, I also believe strongly that laws allowing or implementing the following would greatly improve society.

• Gambling age of 12
• Drinking age of 12
• Legalise prostitution, as vaguely outlined above
• The Alternative Vote system for General and Local elections
• 650 apartments in one building in Westminster, for MPs' second homes

I have arguments ranging from reasonable to firm and structured for the above, but this post is getting lengthy anyway, so I'll stop here.

Disagree with any of the above? Well, there is a space to leave comments below. It's possible to make them anonymously, but, really, an anonymous opinion is a worthless one. If you believe something, put your name to it.

Act II

Last term was incredible. I don't know anyone here who is not of that opinion. I've already written more than enough in the past ten weeks about the brilliance of meeting new people and that it is a pleasure unequalled by any other. I spoke at the close of last term with many a friend of the difficulty returning home at Christmas presented; departing new friends and heading back to a place which was no longer home.

This term, heading back to Whitley Bay seems near inconsequential. I am much looking forward to seeing friends of old, a great deal more so than I was at Christmas. Nonetheless, it is neither saddening nor a relief to be leaving campus for five weeks. Why is that so? Well, I've given it a great deal of thought. Here comes that thought.

Act Two

That's just it. Only once before did I ever truly dive into a new setting, and that would have been at the very start of school, which failed to make any mark on my memory at all. Neither have I ever encountered so many fresh faces in such a short period as I did at the start of university. In much respect, those ten weeks was the establishing piece of this year, of my university experience, and possibly of my life as a whole. Thus, Term 1 was in all respects Act I. Conversely, this term, as I mentioned to Josh Glenn on numerous occasions, has felt very much like Act II. Very little has developed; nothing much has changed. We have, for a second time, reached the interval, and this time the anticipation for further narrative is much diminished.

The word "diminished" leads me nicely onto a second, partially detached, point.

Diminishing Returns

Viewing this term not as a second part, but as a second story, it is then a sequel and not a second act. Thus, as ever, it suffers inevitably from diminishing returns. It could never measure up to the original, or, at the very least, it would fail to stand alone. Term 2 relies on Term 1 for all of its themes and motifs, but Term 1 being a conceptualised, perfectly closed work of art — as shown by its ability to captivate the audience and render them wanting more — Term 2 would never manage to match the effect of the former.

Leaving analogues to performance art in all its forms aside, we venture for my final deliberation into the wacky world of philosophy.

Me

Douglas Adams closes the first of his undeniably fantastic Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of books with the following gem:

The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.

I like to think of three phases in the development of personal relationships as the You, Me, and Them stages. In the You phase, the main aim is to build rapport with the new person with whom one is building a relationship. The Me phase involves discovering how this new relationship affects oneself, or rather, finding one's own identity. The third and final stage is the most complex, and this Them stage appertains to the theorising of how any third party might view the first two parties and any interaction between them.

In very basic animals, knowledge of one's surroundings is acquired, and some basic prey may understand the existence of a predator without necessarily having any concept of self. The next level of creatures up I'd imagine includes cats, who can both reason that the bird in its vision is a living thing and that it is itself a creature capable of choices. Thus, the cat can reach the Me stage, which the ant cannot.

The human has a very strange ability yet. He is not only capable of reasoning that the creature in his vision is a conscious one, nor that he himself is thinking, but further: he can think as though he were that creature. The Them phase, then, is covered by any creature with the ability to empathise. This strange affinity for putting oneself in the shoes of another is something quite sophisticated indeed. What the hell does this have to do with trimesters? I'm glad you asked.

In Term 1, the emphasis was very much on getting to know one's surroundings, and, more precisely, the knew people in one's life. Thus, upon leaving said people who had very much been the focus of any thought, whether conscious or subconscious, the observer suffers a sudden sense of emptiness, of desolation. "Why am I leaving my whole world behind?" is possibly the thought that occurs in some shape or form of anyone vacating a brand new home for the first time.

In Term 2, I have noticed in myself and others a tendency to question one's own identity. After ten weeks of this tendency, suddenly the world is no longer about everyone else, but more about the new person whom one has become. As such, leaving this place behind no longer equates to deserting one's world. My world is where I am. Next term, according to my "You, Me, Them" theory, we may well pass into a phase of questions such as "What do they think of us?" Nonetheless, at this point in time, I'm much more concerned with knowing who I am than wondering who everyone around me is, or what they think of everyone else around me. A five week break may well change all of that, but for the moment I have no quarrel with taking a five week break.

By Any Other Name

I've ordered pasta from Pizza Hut. I've had pizzas from Shire Chippy. I've drank lemonade made by Coca-Cola. When I eat a Mars bar, I don't expect red rocks or the bringer of war. I have never yet expected intelligent conversation from Smarties.

If I pick up The Sun in the morning, I don't expect to burn myself, nor to find it incredibly massive and one astronomical unit away. I don't expect to have The Daily Mail delivered daily, nor the Express to run faster than the rest. The Guardian does not watch over me, and neither does The Observer see what I'm doing. I have never yet expected The Times to be a world clock.

This was going to be a lot longer and cover more than food and newspapers, but since the notion against which I was attempting to make a point is increasingly rearing its ugly head, I must endeavour to spread the word as quickly as possible.

Yes, "Marvel Avengers Assemble" is an idiotic name for anything but an action figure collection, or one of those overpriced collect-one-piece-each-week magazines, but, really, who gives a fuck? It's just a name.

Optimism

I know. I didn't think I was capable of it.

More than anything else, I'm looking forward to not living in this glorified Travelodge. I may have lost count, but I believe it's around 160 days until we can move into our house in Leamington. Here comes an exploration of all the things which will be much better in my new home.

First up, as it's on my mind, laundry. Currently, I have to walk about 50m to the building opposite if I want to wash my clothes. As such, I don't do that nearly often enough. Next year, the washing machine is 5m from my bedroom. Furthermore, my bedroom itself is a lot bigger, will have a sofa in it, a router, a server, some spare monitors, one hell of a printer, possibly a piano and much more wardrobe space and thus much more clothes. The only thing this bedroom has over my future one is its ensuite bathroom.

By some sort of anomalous geographical tragedy, The West Midlands are in the middle of nowhere, despite being in the middle of England. Meriden, Britain's furthest village from the sea, is closer to this University than anything which counts as civilisation. I feel sympathy for Coventry; whereas London is more than experienced in rising from the ashes, Coventry was completely forsaken after the Luftwaffe decided to tear it apart. Perhaps it was thriving and trendy in the '30s. So we have future house's next advantage: location.

Leamington Spa is a lovely little town. Rather deserted, unlike any similar settlement in Tyneside which all clump together to form a kind of sprawling metropolis, Warwickshire's towns are some distance from each other. Further, Leamington Spa has a McDonald's; Whitley Bay does not. Stupid protesting residents.

As a town, it really is quite something, and given that within a five-minute radius there is more than I can properly discuss, I'm going to forsake prose and venture into the hideous world of bullet points:

• Domino's Pizza
• McDonald's
• Every clothes shop imaginable.
• Pizza Hut
• Pizza Express
• Apollo Cinema — which is the nicest cinema I've ever known
• Yet more places that do pizza
• CEX
• Tesco Express
• Swimming Pool
• More quaint parks than anyone would ever need — picnics!
• A copious amount of pubs
• A more copious amount of clubs
• A TRAIN STATION! — I've never lived so close to a train station.
• Curry houses by the dozen

Really, as of August, the only time I have to leave Leamington is when I have lectures. Darned lectures: they take all the fun out of University.

And before I forget, the top five "best things" about my house next year are my housemates.

Home Alone

No man is an island, but I might just be a peninsula.

Having one's house to oneself is a thrill beyond even using the correct pronouns, ignoring the stylistic convention of a general "you" in order to avoid sounding like a character in a period drama. Note, I avoid such disasters by saying things of consequence from time to time, and not repeatedly commenting on how ridiculously proud Mr Darcy is. I've digressed.

Being home alone is brilliant as a child, especially with a house that is ordinarily filled with brothers and sisters. The novelty is not the only attraction. There's a post lingering around here from two years ago which tells of the numerous times I had bacon in one week that my family went on holiday without me. Needless to say, I wouldn't use 56 Otterburn as a den for gorging on pigs like a (cannibalistic) pig any more. 40 days meat-free, ladies and gentlemen.

This weekend, all but two of my fellow Flat 29ers are away. In a family home, I could roam around every room, pry toy-boxes, borrow any CD or DVD without permission and take as long as I want in the shower whilst the family is away. Here, this weekend, five rooms are locked, I'm stuck with my own meagre collection of media, and I can shower as long as I want whenever I want. En-suite bathroom, peeps; it even has a bath.

Furthermore, I'd ordinarily invite copious amounts of friends around to 56 whenever I had the place to myself, but I only have 29 to myself because my friends aren't here. It is a strange, paradoxical situation and I think the only way to combat it is to visit the Union's pub, The Dirty Duck, with the few remaining members of the clan who are currently dotted around campus.

Would you look at that? I actually blogged about something that happened.

Five Minute Fiction

Here's a challenge for myself, then. A short story - with some merit and hopefully not totally based on Batman comics - in five minutes or so. I hope you're all ready, already, because this rollercoaster ride is about to start.

It was a chilly Saturday afternoon when Derek realised that he'd been a fool. He'd gone and put salt in his tea, instead of sugar. Not just once: he'd been doing it his whole life.

It probably would have been without consequence, had Derek been a builder or a civil servant, but he was unfortunately the President of the Moon, and perhaps the odd dose of glucose would have prevented some of his more catastrophic decisions.


Four years before that Saturday, whilst Mr Derek Stantz was still in office, there was a disaster on the moon. It wasn't a tidal wave of a hurricane. By definition, an earthquake makes no sense. I am making this up as I go along, and the only natural disaster I can consider occurring on the moon given my limited knowledge of its geology - or, perhaps, lunology - is an asteroid. There are no volcanoes given the lack of an interesting core. It lacks oceans, bar the few fictional ones which I will make up alongside the society I'm creating on the moon. They have a President. They also have a very large swimming pool, similar in size to the North Atlantic Ocean, and a forest of mostly pines, spread across the western hemisphere. They have an atmosphere of sorts, thanks to the oxygen- and carbon-based lifeforms that have taken refuge there, courtesy of a few colonialist missions to everyone's favourite satellite in late 2023.

It was 2041 when the disaster struck. Scientists had seen it coming seven years previously, but the then President Alan Gregson had completely ignored their warnings, burying the reports in the deepest, darkest caverns of the lunar surface, which, incidentally, are a damned sight darker than those found on Earth. Thus, when the disaster struck, President Stantz knew nothing of it. The forests were wiped out and I have no idea what this has to do with having salt in tea instead of sugar.


Right, that didn't go quite as planned. I'll try again in a few weeks, and I hope to make a slightly more coherent tale. I hope the eight of you who read this enjoyed coming along for the ride. I'm guessing you want a finale to the tale, so here you go:

With the forests gone, the oceans cried. The atmosphere broke down and the population were panic-stricken. Not a single soul on the satellite managed coherent thought. Save one man. The rest of the population had just the right amount of glucose in their system to be properly seized by panic. Salt inhibits such a reaction. Salt prevents empathy. With one fair swipe of cold, hard, logic, Derek Stantz hit the button. Within two seconds, the moon had imploded. The Earth, and Derek Stantz in asylum on it, were completely unaffected, save the lack of a tide and the bright light in the sky.

On that Saturday afternoon, Derek wished he'd panicked. He wished he'd been on the moon when it blew. He missed his home, his people, his post dearly. Drinking his tea, he wept a little.

Okay, that was far too grim. I don't think I'll try this again.

Imprisonment

I used to think my bedroom back home in Whitley Bay was cell-like, and I wanted to live elsewhere from the moment I realised that was a possibility, which, given my perceptiveness during early childhood, was probably at a very young age.

"Be careful what you wish for" is the phrase usually associated to such matters, and despite its disgusting syntax, its sentiment appeals currently. I may have a bigger room than I did – it even has an en-suite bathroom – and I have the run of the kitchen, but I still feel less free at times, living on this inaccessible campus, in the middle of nowhere, by which I mean too far from the sea.

Back home, the public transport system works. The buses may be slow, occasionally expensive, and inevitably each service is either infrequent or unreliable, but never both. The Metro surpasses every public transport system in Britain excepting those run by TfL, and though there's always a slight possibility of a stabbing, it is at least close to reliable, and more than enough healthy competition for buses, which most areas of the UK lack.

As such, in Newcastle, it's fairly easy to go anywhere you want to go – and a bunch of places you wouldn't – pretty quickly, and, besides, neither the sea nor the city centre is beyond cycling distance, no matter where you live in Tyne and Wear. There's always something to do and somewhere to go. That's not the case living on this campus. Perhaps Leamington Spa is better for it, though it still resides at least sixty miles from the coast, and certainly less architecturally interesting.

I'll hope that this craving for sea air and an end to the tedium of this landscape or lack thereof is a passing one, after all, if I can go 32 days without meat, I can surely make it to the end of the term without watching waves crash down on the shore. Oh, waves. Hmm, sand.

To Dress A Mathematician

In all honesty, I'm not sure whether I'm going for a To Kill A Mockingbird thing there, in which case I'm implying that dressing a mathematician is a sin, or perhaps it's a Batman Begins affair, in which case one has to become a mathematician to conquer the inordinate challenge of dressing one of them.

Insanity aside, the title refers to JJ's seemingly impossible task today, as we went to Leamington on a mission to take out the renegade Lieutenant Fashion Sense, first name Lack Of. My mother will vouch that this has always been a difficult and sometimes harrowing endeavour, and she had given up on dressing me by the time I hit adult size shoes. JJ, however, did manage to find a few items that suited me, but they, amazingly, weren't trench coats or Converse. What with that and going to a club last night, I figure I may start accidentally blending into society.

Fortunately, however, I did turn down burger at the club – yep, that's how good Kasbah is, they had a barbecue type affair in the smoking area – because I'm currently vegetarian. I don't think I've mentioned that, but I am now one with that freaky tribe of people. I should probably stop offending them, but I attack maths students and mock men of my height for being short, so I wouldn't want to give the environmentally benevolent herbivores any preferential treatment.

Moreover, to counteract no longer appearing to be a science fiction character all of the time – The Doctor, Darth Vader, Captain Jack Harkness, Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Dr Emmett Brown and Batman all wear particularly long coats, or, you know, capes – I'm writing a blog post declaring my love for looking like a pillock.

The nonconformity balance is restored.

Yoghurt Pots and String

I think creativity is the tonic of life.

Right now, I should probably be doing work. I get plenty of it. That's not stimulating, though. The end result of a maths assignment is far from new, and undoubtedly not unique due to a count upwards of 300 fellow students who also have to do said work. It's not part of my design, and, besides, who ever enjoyed being told what to do?

I'm not doing work; I'm writing this. It's hardly a short story, or a canvas painting, but it's certainly a start. Really, right now, and at any given time, I simply want to write, paint, sketch, speak, design, build, engineer, play, invent.

Perhaps I played with Lego too much as a kid, and spent way too much time improvising on piano instead of actually learning the boring ABRSM exam pieces.

I like to think of creativity as the most socially acceptable form of nonconformism. Aside from writing, composing, inventing or the like, breaking societal conventions tends to result in being branded things like "kleptomaniac," "nymphomaniac," or, if you're really messed up, "pyromaniac." I can't get arrested for writing a blog... erm... so long as I'm nice about the US Government. You guys rock.

I planned on keeping this post both shorter and with much less self-imposed gravitas and philosophical undertones than my last post, about The Hollow Men. I'll likely go into the kitchen now and make a cardboard box into some kind of dinosaur.

Between the idea and the reality

I'm at University now. I thought I'd mention that for those you who don't know me, or who haven't been paying attention. Now that everyone's on the same page, I'll begin.

The seriously sharp amongst will have noticed The Hollow Men has crept its way into my title. I love that poem. Eliot is brilliant in general - without him there'd be no Cats, and that would be a travesty.

The Hollow Men is a truly beautiful piece, all about the nature of disappointment. More specifically, it deals with the inevitability of disappointment. When it's not being ironic, the phrase "that's the way I want to go," ordinarily applies to drifting off peacefully in one's sleep. Irvine Welsh thinks otherwise. Choosing life is akin to choosing "rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home." In the end, though, it's likely that the vast majority of us will die in a hospital ward, low on relatives and without any recollection of events from our last twenty years of life. Medicine is likely to advance far enough to eliminate all but a handful of diseases, car safety will improve exponentially and violent crime is forever on its way out, so the odds of living long past the onset of senility is practically an inevitability for anyone who really wants that. So, it follows thus, we will all end, "not with a bang, but a whimper."

How disappointing is that? Realistically, the death of Thorin Oakenshield is what most people would desire. To have that final victory, that ultimate battle, to win it all, then just leave one's corporeality. It's not quite a bang, but it's far from a whimper. The alternative is to perish in battle, but that is disappointing, too. Granted, it's a bang, but dying halfway through the story, with no epilogue, it's almost, but not quite, as unsatisfying as dying years later, the last remnant of your own forgotten tale.

If I can return to my original point after that pseudo-digression, The Hollow Men deals with the dissatisfaction that every man feels when his idea becomes reality. On a side note, wherever I use a gender specific noun, just read it as the other gender or your favourite non-gender specific equivalent if you're the kind of person to take offence. Back to the point, now that nobody is taking offence from stylistic choices, I can't remember ever imagining something perfectly. I'm often quite close, but the accuracy of the my approximation correlates to the relevance of my past experience. I can imagine a future train journey very well if I know the train, the line, the time of day, who the passengers will be, whether or not I've already read the book with which I'd occupy myself and so on. In the case of University, I had absolutely no idea.

In terms of academic content, I had a better idea than most. Wikipedia, the Open University and the odd visit, for one reason or another, to Newcastle University all gave me an insight into the vast difference between school and this place. The disparity between teaching at schools and learning at University was more of a shock to some than to myself, given that circumstances necessitated my self-teaching onwards from at least five years ago. Even before that, I knew above and beyond the scope of the curriculum by virtue of curiosity, an ability to read, and access to far too many encyclopaedias, atlases, poor excuses for newspapers and very few channels that weren't BBC. Enough autocentricism for now, academia is less than half of the University experience. For some, it counts for closer to zero.

The next most obvious consequence of conscripting oneself to the West Midlands for four years is that, if they're fortunate, your family doesn't live there. This came as no surprise. I was every bit as callous about the lack of brothers and sisters and, for that matter, a mother as I expected to be. Anyone who actually knows me will know just how much I love being one of the five, but I can do that from afar. Perhaps I would have found it more difficult if I were the first to flee the nest, but, as it happens, I am the middle child and the second to put down hooks outside the Northeast. Again, my mother makes it easier. I love that woman, though I never tell her, but living with her isn't half difficult. She does do my laundry, though, and thus I regularly make infrequent trips to the launderette here. It's 100 metres away, and in the opposite direction to everything else in the 'verse, given that the only entrance to this glorified Travelodge is at the opposite end of its grassy courtyard to the launderette. As such, I've been of my own accord less than three times, and that condition satisfied by a margin of at least two. I never expected to do much laundry, so as of yet, I'm yet to mention a condition of this bubble onto which the shadow falls between the motion and the act.

If you've not read The Hollow Men, you probably missed three obscure metaphors by now. Go read it, come back. Done that? Good. Yes, I know, it was in Apocalypse Now. So was I Can't Get No Satisfaction, but they don't mention that every time it plays on Radio 2.

The real shadow, the headpiece filled with straw, the discrepancy between essence and the descent, is the people. Unlike trains or launderettes, people are intrinsically different. A train goes choo, and a washing machine whirrs, but a person can make those noises and so many more. "Thanks, Captain Obvious," some of you say. "Nice way of putting it," say others. "Stop with the quotes," go yet another set. That's exactly the point. You load up a washing machine, bit of soap powder, hit the button and it washes your clothes. So I'm told. As far as people are concerned, there is no right way through clothes at them. For washing machines, there's no wrong way. That's what it does. I can generalise about washing machines; they don't take offence. People revel in their differences, and I can't even make comments about all of a single group without someone piping up in protest. I'm not complaining either. Quite frankly, people make life worth living. Not even trains do that, and I bloody love trains.

I've met a whole load of people in my life. A whole load - still with the washing machine lexicon, I see. Sorry about that. Nonetheless, just as I based my expectation of mathematics on what I'd seen earlier, I based my entire expectation of who I'd meet, greet, eat, beat, sheet, neat, hang on, the list stopped working. I based my expectation of what people would be likely upon some biased concatenation of every personality I'd ever encountered. That's a lot of personalities. Ordinarily, taking that much information, adjusting it for inflation, dividing by the square of the speed of light and then taking logs would usually yield at least some approximations worth their weight. In this case, no amount of calculating gave me anything like a glimpse at the nature of the people here.

It's almost as though nobody I ever met had anything besides anatomy and culture in common with everybody I've met since. It's terrifying and enlightening, seeing so many new combinations of little idiosyncrasies, culminating in a plethora of personalities, none of which are anything like any conception of my mind. From an existentialist point of view, there's no greater argument against being simply a brain in a jar. My subconscious is incredible: my conscious is an abacus next to its DeepThought, but it would take a machine infinitely more complex to simulate just a handful of us luminous beings. Not this crude matter at all.

Nonetheless, the horror of surprise created by twenty-two-thousand unfamiliar characters pales into insignificance under the right light. That light, to me, is the future. It counts for nothing, making every last one of these beautiful amalgamations appear in an instant, since time - the destroyer of minds, men and mountains - will vanish them all in due course. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

I, January

Christmas has its merits, but the novelty wore off a long time ago. Fairytale of New York's melancholy euphony will never get old, but tacky trees and unashamedly crass television lost its appeal years ago, if it ever had any.

Where Christmas is the fever, January is the prescription. It is the phoenix from the flames. It is the silent guardian of hopes and dreams. Aside from ending wars of mass-participation, New Year is the only chance humanity gets to share a clean slate. "Oh, that was last year," is a tonic that makes any unsavoury act that little bit less distasteful.

In January, anything goes. Trying something new becomes effortless, and sticking with the old becomes nostalgic. Despite what Wizzard might have said, Christmas never reinvents for January the lingering hope for unending festivity like summer imposes on September. The Christmas period is well-defined as the time ending at New Year and beginning in the middle of September when Asda is finished with it's "School's Back" decorations and knows that Hallowe'en just isn't big enough to fill its stores. That level of dragging out is more than summer usually gets anyway, and with torrents of rain in place of sun, sea and sand.

January's charm is aided by its lack of eternal life. December rears its ugly head in ever other "-ember," but the bringer of new opportunities, the laid-back, laissez-faire beauty known as January simply bides its time, revealing itself at the end of the show, like Shirley Bassey's money-note or a magician's second budgie.