Gruts

Genesis 6:

And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

Say what? Whoa, hang on a second there, LORD! Slight over-reaction, don't You think? OK, so maybe us men have been a bit naughty, but what have the beasts, and the creeping things, and the fowls of the air ever done to you? You're omnipotent and omniscient, for Your sake! It seems to me You could easily resolve this situation with a little creative problem-solving and a couple of Your "Let there be"s. It took You almost a week to make all that stuff; it'd be a real shame to obliterate it, just because it doesn't quite live up to Your expectations. Talk about sledgehammers and nuts!

…And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

A boat? You want me to build a boat? You're taking the piss, right? In Your infinite wisdom, that's the most practical solution You can come up with: put everything worth saving on a boat, and drown the rest. With all due respect, are You totally fucking nuts?

…or something like that.

The above account of the end of version 1.0 of life on earth is told in an anthology of historical fiction known as The Bible. It's an international best-seller. In fact, it is the international best-seller, outselling even The da Vinci Code. And, just like The da Vinci Code, many people believe it to contain more than a grain of truth—even the really weird shit about making women out of ribs, and boats big enough to hold live specimens of every species on earth (except the fish, obviously).

I wouldn't mind if these Bible-literalist saddoes kept their silly ideas to themselves, I really wouldn't, but that's not their style, I'm afraid:

Mark 16:15: And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

They're only following orders, you see—although I hope even they would balk at preaching to creatures.

Unfortunately, in recent years, these nutters have grown more and more militant. They've started claiming that their (as opposed to any other) creation myth should be treated as just as valid as the scientific explanation of how we got here. In some parts of the world—parts that really should know better—it has even got to the stage where concerned parents have had to go to court to protect the teaching of real science in their children's classrooms.

Now I'm no god or anything silly like that, but it seems to me that, with idiots like these prancing around the planet, version 1.1 of life on earth is heading down the pan as well. So before the LORD goes into a tizzy and takes it into His head to destroy us all again, why don't we try to sort it out for ourselves this time?

It's time these ridiculous people learnt the error of their ways.

I have previously gone on record as saying that I won't get into debates with people who believe in the literal truth of the Book of Genesis—to do so would be to credit them as capable of rational argument—but that doesn't mean I can't fight the good fight with all my might. So, from now on, when it comes to creationists, religious fundamentalists and their ilk waging war against science, it's no to polite debate, it's no to respecting other people's viewpoints, and it's no more Mister Nice Guy! From now on, I'm going to use the most sophisticated weapon in my armoury:

From now on, I'm taking the piss!

I think I might be a philistine—and a criminal:

BBC: Literary greats 'key to English'

A survey of thousands of teachers, pupils, parents, writers and advisers found great support for the classics.

Poet Laureate Andrew Motion said it was a "deep crime" never to have read key Shakespeare works, Paradise Lost or Great Expectations.

I've not read Paradise Lost, I've only read one of Shakespeare's so-called comedies (which wasn't in the least bit funny), and, although I have read Great Expectations, let's just say it didn't live up to its name.

I think Andrew Motion is wrong about the Shakespearean stuff. Shakespere wrote plays. Plays are supposed to be watched, not read. Reading A Midsummer Night's Dream at school was enough to put me off the Immoral Bard for years: You called one of your characters Bottom? Stop it, Bill, you're killing me! It wasn't until I got to see an open-air amateur production of A Comedy of Errors (which actually was quite funny), that I finally appreciated how Shakespeare should be experienced. I also won a tea-tray and a bottle of shampoo in the raffle, which was nice.

Can you imagine the fuss Andrew Motion would kick up if people claimed to understand Jane Austen because they had seen the latest film adaptation of Pride & Prejudice? Well then! Horses for courses, and all that. If it's a novel, read it; if it's a play, go and see it.

Actually, I might have quite enjoyed Great Expectations, had our English teacher not thrown a wobbly with us for not having read it already. He told us we had two days to cram-read it. How stupid was that? Mind you, I could never get into any other Dickens stuff. His idea of a funny name was on a par with Shakespeare's: Martin Chuzzlewit, my arse!

New Scientist letters: Not so Fibonacci

From Ian Stewart Coventry, Warwickshire, UK:

Gael Mariani and Martin Scott perpetuate a series of myths in their letter about Fibonacci numbers in nature (3 September, p 19). It is true that the Fibonacci numbers are associated with a particular kind of spiral - the logarithmic spiral - and they are also closely associated with the "golden number", which is roughly 1.6. And the nautilus shell does have the form of a logarithmic spiral.

Unfortunately the correlation ends there, because there are many different logarithmic spirals. In such spirals the space between consecutive windings grows exponentially at a fixed rate, and this rate can be any positive number. The usual "Fibonacci" spiral has a growth rate of about 6.8 - the fourth power of the golden number - whereas that of the nautilus is about 3, meaning it is too tightly wound to be related to Fibonacci. This growth rate is different in different gastropod species.

The spirals in horns have even less to do with Fibonacci. The connection with elephant tusks is pretty much non-existent. The spirals of galaxies are not even logarithmic. In particular, most have two arms winding from the centre, whereas the logarithmic spiral has a single arm.

The connection between Fibonacci numbers, certain spirals, the golden number and the structure of many plants is genuine and increasingly well understood. Most other alleged occurrences of Fibonacci in nature are bogus.

A great example of people getting carried away by an interesting phenomenon.

Fitz did a great cartoon about Fibonacci spirals in snail shells many years ago. I must ask him if he still has a copy—but only maths anoraks will appreciate it.

There was a scruffy man standing at the entrance to the farmers' market when I popped into town for the papers this morning. He had his hand clapped to his ear, and was talking in a very loud voice—actually it was more like monosyllabic chanting than talking. I assumed that he had a poor reception on his mobile phone. I also assumed that he had a really embarrassing phone, because he seemed to be going to great lengths to conceal it behind the flat of his hand.

It turned out he was a folk singer.

Richard Carter - George Michael Tribute Act

Richard Carter appeared on Stars in their Eyes in March 1999. He proved to be a popular contestant and was well credited for his performance.

Richard's act contains everything from early George Michael hits such as 'Everything She Wants' and 'A Different Corner' and follows his career up to date with his latest hits.

Not wishing to be unkind to my namesake or anything, but I think he looks more like me than he looks like George Michael.

In fact, I think I'd go so far as to say that the resemblance is pretty damn spooky.

Stense is 'working from home' this week. On Monday, I sent her an email, accusing her of swanning around. This morning, she sent me a text message:

…Got in late last night to yr 'swanning around' email - I had just got in from seeing Swan Lake!

I am in league with the devil.

I met a retired ballerina once. Her name was Dame Margot Fonteyn. She was tiny, graceful and delicate—totally unlike a swan, in fact.

Swans aren't tiny, graceful and delicate; swans are HUGE, LUMBERING BASTARDS. It's common knowledge that they can break a man's arm with a beat of their wings. You wouldn't catch Dame Margot doing that. And, when they're not breaking people's arms, swans are pecking at you with their VISCIOUS beaks. But they don't call them beaks. Oh no, they call them bills. How bloody pretentious is that? When you think about it, swans are nothing more than oversized, dangerous ducks. They might act all innocent, but I half suspect swans actually eat people. They're supposed to live on weeds and gravel and shit off the bottom of ponds, but have you see the size of them? They're SODDING ENORMOUS! They didn't get that size by eating pondweed, I tell you.

Someone should do something.

All joking aside, I'm beginning to think that I really must be in league with the devil. Try this one on for size (apologies in advance, it's a bit convoluted, so I've split it into bullet points—bear with me on this one):

• I live in Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire;
• I am not a smoker, but I am a strong advocate of smokers' rights. I think they've been persecuted quite enough. Stopping them smoking at work was all well and good, but now the Health Nazis want to stop them smoking in all public places—even when the owners of those public places want to accomodate smokers. As far as smoking in pubs is concerned, I positively welcome it: it's traditional, it adds to the atmosphere (both literally and metaphorically), and it discourages thick-skinned parents from bringing their brats into the bar;
• quite a few of my friends are smokers. Last year, for a bit of fun, I sent one of them, Ann, a set of amusing pro-smoking sticky labels I had made to stick over the legally mandated anti-smoking propaganda on cigarette packs. They were well received by everyone who saw them;
• one of my stickers said Non-Smokers Die Too, You Know. This has become a favourite quote of mine and Jen's when winding up anti-smokers;
• the best band on Planet Earth is The Fall;
• despite being a total tosser at times, The Fall's frontman, Mark E Smith, is a British institution. He should also probably be in one. His lyrics are often totally incomprehensible;
• The Fall recorded 24 live sessions for the late, greatly lamented John Peel. They were his favourite band. He once described them as "a band by which, in our house, all others are judged". Mine too;
• earlier this year, The Fall released their entire Peel Sessions in a magnificent, six-volume boxed set. In my opinion, the track Blindness from their final Peel Session was The Fall's finest moment in a very large number of very fine moments;
• this week, The Fall released their 25th studio album, Fall Heads Roll. It is very good. It contains a new recording of Blindness (not quite as good as the Peel Session version), with many of the original lyrics changed;
• yesterday, full of anticipation, I slipped Fall Heads Roll into my car's CD player on the way into work. Blindness was track 7. Three minutes and fifty-eight seconds into it, I nearly crashed the car when I heard the following lyrics wafting out of my speakers (brace yourself, this is going to do your head in):

…And, from Hebden Bridge,
Somebody said to me,
"I can't understand a word you say."
He said, "99% of non-smokes die"…

So there you have it: I must be in league with the devil, because my favourite song-writer has made reference to me in a re-worded version of my favourite Fall song—even though he probably doesn't even realise it.

Well, that's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.

In celebration of the centenary this year of Albert Einstein's annus mirabilis (for which he should, by rights, have won not one, but three Nobel Prizes), I think it's about time I told you my Einstein joke. It's a fairly significant anniversary for the joke as well: I thought of it 25 years ago this year. I was still at school studying physics, and there had been a lot of programmes on the telly about the 75th anniversary that year of Einstein's annus mirabilis.

So, without further ado, here it is:

The Einstein Joke

Albert Einstein had a brother named Fred, who also dabbled in physics. Being a close relative of Albert's, he had more than a passing interest in Albert's ideas on relativity.

Fred read up on the subject and learnt that, as objects move towards you at close to the speed of light, they appear to be more blue in colour (a phenonmenon known as blue shift), whereas objects moving away from you at close to the speed of light appear more red in colour (a phenomenon known as red shift).

This got Fred thinking: what would objects look like if they moved across your field of vision at close to the speed of light? Would they be red-shifted or blue-shifted?

So Fred took out his slide-rule and his protractor and set to work trying to answer this fascinating question. After many months of calculations, he came to the remarkable conclusion that objects moving across your field of vision at close to the speed of light would appear to have red and blue diagonal stripes running across them. Because this phenomenon was half red shift and half blue shift, Fred decided to name it half shift.

Full of excitement, Fred showed his calculations to his brother. But Albert took one look at them and sadly shook his head:

"Nein, Friedrich," he said (because he was still German in those days), "I am afraid zat you are inkorrect: as any dummkopf knows, light can't half shift."

I thank you.

BBC: Pinter wins Nobel literary prize

Controversial British playwright and campaigner Harold Pinter has won the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature.

No he hasn't: Harold Pinter has been awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature. He did not actively participate in any competition, and was probably oblivious to the fact that he was in the running. To be awarded a Nobel Prize is a great honour; to say that he won it makes it sound as if Pinter sought the prize—which rather cheapens it.

Nice one, Harold!

I became invisible for approximately 45 minutes on Thursday.

I say approximately because I didn't become invisible to myself, only to other people, so it's hard to tell exactly when the invisibility kicked in. It must have been shortly after I collected my trolley and headed into Tesco. The woman on the lottery counter certainly seemed to be able to see me—she didn't show any surprise at all when I asked to collect my winnings (two tenners in a fortnight: my syndicate and I are on a roll!)—but, by the time I had got to the fruit and veg section, I had become the invisible man.

The first sign of my invisibility was when people began cutting in front of me as if I wasn't there. At first, I took this to be common rudeness, but, after a couple of minutes, I became convinced something was up: people were acting as if I wasn't there far more spectacularly than usual: they marched straight at me, stepped right in front of me when I was travelling at speed, and hove their trolleys into my path with all the grace and inertia of oil tankers. Then, as I was heading (rather appropriately) towards the ginger display, a red-headed man cut in front of me and parked his trolley in such a way that it made a 'V' shape with the shelves. He then stood in the opening of the 'V', totally monopolising the ginger. I tried to squeeze round the side of him, but he stepped into my path, looking neither directly at nor directly away from me. I tried sneaking round the other side, but he moved again. So I gently pushed his trolley out the way. The ginger-headed man gaped in open amazement as an invisible force propelled his trolley sideways into the aisle.

But what really brought my invisibility home was when a fat, sweaty woman handbreak-turned her trolley directly into my path, blocking the aisle in front of me. I stared at her in irritation, while she looked straight through me, eyeing-up the chocolate biscuits.

Let's be honest, we've all fantasised about becoming invisible at some point, but have you ever worked out exactly what you would do if you could become invisible for 45 minutes? Me too! But Tesco isn't really the place you had in mind, is it? Me neither. And, thinking about it, I now realise that it probably wasn't me who had become invisible at all; my trolley must have been invisible all the time, and had somehow extended its cloak of invisibility to me. That's a much more rational explanation.

And who wants the 45 minutes of invisibility they've always dreamed about if they have to lug a supermarket trolley around with them as part of the deal?

Every Sunday morning, the elderly woman who works at the local newsagent's moans about the weight of my newspaper as she hauls it across the counter to zap with her barcode reader. I'm not exaggerating, she moans about it every single week. She doesn't moan in a friendly, aren't-these-big-newspapers-a-real-nuisance kind of way; she moans as if to admonish me for not choosing a lighter paper.

I think she's in the wrong job.

BBC: Daniel Craig takes on 007 mantle

Actor Daniel Craig has been confirmed as the new James Bond…

"It's a huge challenge. Life is about challenges and this is one of the big ones as an actor," said Craig, 37, who will be the sixth James Bond.

Setting aside my natural disappointment at having been passed over for the Bond role yet again (despite my excellent credentials as a Man of Mystery and Adventure), HOLY CRAP, MAN: I'm older than James Bond!

I watched Mastermind at my parents' house on Tuesday. I think they're dumbing down the show: the eventual winner's specialist subject was The Television Series One Foot in the Grave. I don't believe it!

It reminded me of my favourite Mastermind story. It's strange I haven't mentioned here before, so why don't I put that right immediately?

There was a TV programme called Nationwide which ran from the Sixties until the early Eighties. Some of you might remember it. It was a strange mix of current affairs and inane trivia. They once had some nutter on it who claimed he could walk on eggs without breaking them. He achieved this by jumping over the eggs and touching them gently with his foot as he flew by. It took him several attempts before he succeeded, after which, flushed with success, he demonstrated his ability to walk on water using a near-identical technique. I'll never forget the presenter, Michael Barrett's, exact words after witnessing this incredible feat: "Is that it?"

Anyway, I digress. A few years before the Powers That Be finally pulled the plug on Nationwide, someone on the programme had the bright idea of running a Junior Mastermind competition. The grand final was between a young girl from Welwyn Garden City (or somewhere posh like that) and some rough, northern lad from Bolton. Magnus Magnusson (who else?) asked the questions:

Magnusson: Our first contestant please. And your name is?
Girl: Webeccaa Bwacknell-Wemmington.
Magnusson: Occupation?
Girl: Schoolgirl.
Magnusson: And your specialist subject?
Girl: Woman Bwitain, forty-four A.D. to four-hundwed and ten A.D.

OK, I made up her name.

OK, I made up her speech impediment as well. But you get the idea: she was a very posh girl from a very posh school.

She got about four questions correct with eighteen passes.

On came her adversary:

Magnusson: And our second contestant please. And your name is?
Boy: Gary Radcliffe.
Magnusson: Occupation?
Boy: Schoolboy.
Magnusson: And your specialist subject?
Boy: BUZZES!

Gary's outstanding knowledge of buses (for that is what he meant) enabled him to wipe the floor with poor, young Webecca.

Even though I was only a kid myself at the time, I knew a fix when I saw one.

Actually, I tell I lie: I think Gary might have lost. Either way, it was still a fix. It was like that stupid race at primary school all over again.

New Scientist: Out-of-this-world sex could jeopardise missions

Sex and romantic entanglements among astronauts could derail missions to Mars and should therefore be studied by NASA, warns a top-level panel of US researchers.

What are the odds that this so-called top-level panel of researchers works for NASA? And what are the odds that they already have a particular top-level team in mind to carry out this study? I'll bet their lab-coats are looking a bit shabby, the pervs.

The cows on the moors. Can you spot them? (Click photo for larger image.)

Lordy, is it that time of year again already? Jen and I spent several hours traipsing across the local moors with our friend the farmer yesterday. We were looking for some cows that had been grazing up there over the summer. We needed to bring them down into the lower fields for the winter.

Unfortunately, although cows are damn big animals, the local moor is roughly the size of Belgium, so finding them wasn't as easy as you might think. Mind you, unlike a year ago today, at least the cows hadn't split into two groups, and they had only wandered a mile away.

After much deliberation by the official judge (OK, she chose one at random, because she didn't think any of the entries were worthy of winning on merit), we finally have a winner of the My Fanny Up For Grabs competition. He is Justin, and his winning entry went as follows:

Fanny treated her husband like dirt.
His feelings she'd constantly hurt.
So he took his old rifle,
And filled it with trifle,
And blew her head off with dessert.

Congratulations, Justin, that was rubbish. Your top prize, an almost pristine copy of Fanny Cradock's rip-roaring roller coaster of a novel, The Lormes of Castle Rising, is in the post.

Think you can stomach more? Read all the rubbish competition entries.

Those Scousers are a compassionate lot.

We have a small back bedroom which I refer to as the box room. This is on account of my having unceremoniously dumped several boxes of stuff in there shortly after we moved into the house four years ago. They have lain there unopened ever since. The mess in the room has, quite frankly, been driving poor Jen up the wall, so, last weekend, I decided to have a major throw-out.

It took me three hours to go through all the stuff in the boxes. I soon developed a simple but effective filtering rule: Books: keep. Non-books: chuck. I was amazed at how easy it was to chuck so many things that I didn't feel I should chuck four years ago.

I kept a few things which weren't books, of course (including an antique ostrich feather which was a present from Stense—yes, that's right, an ostrich feather), but most of it went straight into the Chuck pile. Then I opened my box of audio tapes:

I haven't listened to an audio tape for years; all my music is on CDs these days, with a bit of stuff you can't get on CD still on vinyl. I hadn't realised how many audio tapes I had amassed over the years—there must have been a few hundred. In the end, I chucked most of them, but there were a few tapes which were too sentimental to part with. Of these, by far the most important was a tape Hitchin did for me when we were at university in 1984.

1984 was the year I finally acquired a taste in music. Before then, I'd had very limited (and, let's be honest, shite) musical tastes. Then I got hooked on The Blues Brothers (still my favourite film), and asked Hitchin if he would do me a bluesy tape. The result was a compilation which I dubbed The Hitchin Connection. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but it certainly had bluesy moments—most notably Click Clack by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. More importantly, it was an absolutely cracking compilation. I played it over and over again. Twenty-one years later, and I reckon it has withstood the test of time remarkably well. It was a major influence on my musical tastes for the last two decades. Here, therefore, for posterity (and just in case I ever accidentally declutter the tape), is a track listing:

Side A	Side B
Walk on the Wild Side Lou Reed	Sultans of Swing Dire Straits
Rock 'n' Roll Lou Reed	Eastbound Train Dire Straits
The Killing Moon Echo & the Bunnymen	London Calling The Clash
The Cutter Echo & the Bunnymen	Brand New Cadillac The Clash
Never Stop Echo & the Bunnymen	Riders on the Storm The Doors
White Riot The Clash	Light My Fire The Doors
Pretty Vacant The Sex Pistols	Bring on the Dancing Horses Echo & the Bunnymen
Let's Lynch the Landlord Dead Kennedys	Bad Moon Rising Creedence Clearwater Revival
Click Clack Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band	Looking for Lewis and Clark The Long Ryders
Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band	The Old Fart at Play Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band
Pena Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band	Frank's Wild Years Tom Waits

Cool tape or what? (Don't blame Hitchin for the Dire Straits: that was my idea.)

The box room is totally empty now. Empty, that is, apart from the two wardrobes Jen unceremoniously dumped in there shortly after we moved into the house four years ago. Come on, Jen, stop being so bloody untidy will you? It's driving me up the wall!

Rod Stewart is on Parky as I type. I'm not a fan. I think he's overrated. Fair's fair: he's realised that he's getting on a bit and needs to find a new sound. For a while, he tried to be Tom Waits (how the hell did he have such a massive hit with Tom Traubert's Blues, when he'd totally ruined it?). Now he's trying to be Harry Nilsson. I don't like his sound, but good luck to him.

Rod Stewart did one very wonderful thing: he sung (uncredited) lead vocals on Python Lee Jackson's masterpiece, In a Broken Dream: a genuine classic. And what happens to genuine classics? Some arsehole does a cover version of them and totally ruins them. In this case, the arsehole was Ronan Keating. Enough said.

Now you know how it feels, Rod. Stop ruining other people's songs and write some of your own: you're up to it (I think).

National Geographic: Coughing Cats May Be Allergic to People, Vets Say

Furry housepets—especially felines—have long been blamed for allergies and breathing problems in people.

But now researchers at an animal hospital in Scotland say the discomfort can also work the other way around: Humans can trigger asthma attacks in cats.

Good.

I saw a ghost once.

This might sound odd coming, as it does, from a devout sceptic (or a terrible sceptic, as a close friend recently put it—as if being sceptical was something to be ashamed of). I usually have no time for mumbo-jumbo such as ghosts, spirits, the afterlife, homeopathy, wind power or papal infallibility; but, on this occasion, I saw it with my own eyes: a 100%, real-death ghost! It startled the crap out of me.

I had known about the ghost since I was a kid. The White Lady, they call her. She haunts the ancient humpback bridge over the stream which formed the picturesque Dibbinsdale valley, close to where I grew up. Local legend has it that, many years ago, a novice nun had a tragic love affair with a monk from a nearby monastery. She ended up drowning herself in the stream. People say, if you pass through Dibbinsdale on a dark, winter's night, you can see her ghost standing on the bridge. Pure nonsense, of course—until you actually see it.

I was seventeen years old when I saw the ghost. It was December 1982, and I had just passed my driving test. This meant I got to give Carolyn a lift in my dad's old Triumph to a local church where she had recently become a bell-ringer. Don't ask me why Carolyn had suddenly decided to take up bell-ringing—it's just the sort of thing she does—but I was glad she had, because I got to spend an hour watching her swing around on the end of a rope, and… well, unlike Carolyn, why don't I leave the rest to the imagination?

Anyway, our route home from the church took us through Dibbinsdale. Even without the ghost, it's a spooky place to drive through after dark, especially in December: the leafless trees cast eery shadows in the beams of your car's headlights. Not that I was worrying about shadows, you understand; I was wondering how it would look if a committed atheist were suddenly to take up bell-ringing.

When we got to the bottom of the hill, I rounded the sharp right-hand bend, then swung hard-left over the bridge. And then I saw her: the White Lady began to materialise directly in front of me. I think I might have gasped (not for the first time that evening), but that was all I had time to do before my car ploughed through the still-not-quite-corporeal form and headed up the other side of the valley.

"Did you see that?" I asked, trying to hide my alarm.

"Did I see what?" asked Carolyn.

"The ghost!"

"Don't be silly, Richard!"

And then I realised what I had really seen. Fortunately, it wasn't too late to save face:

"…Yeah, but you can see where the ghost story comes from: a dark, winter night; the cold air sinks to the bottom of the valley, turning the moisture in the air above the stream to mist; the beam from your headlights shoots into the air as you cross the humpback bridge and suddenly illuminates the mist—is it any wonder people think they've seen a ghost?"

"Only if they're totally stupid, though."

Carolyn's children saw a ghost the other night. They were out in the garden trying to photograph foxes. Their friend was with them, so they took her photograph:

Ectoplasm!!!

When they saw the result, they thought they'd photographed a ghost. It startled the crap out of them. They ran screaming into the house and begged their mum to lock all the doors.

Silly children! Don't you know that ghosts can walk through doors?

(Only joking: there's no such thing as ghosts really!)