Rose

I hadn't thought about the heaviness of soil before. It seemed that a big flower pot full of it was more awkward than I had made allowance for when planning to transport a rose to my mother's house. You could tuck it under one arm best, with both hands clasped underneath. I had it in a thick paper bag with cord handles, from a clothes shop, and just a few of the newly-sprouted leaves poked out of the top so that the passers-by on my walk to the train station took a furtive sideways look with an almost imperceptible raising of the head to get a better angle on whatever could be in there.

In a way, I wanted them to realise it was a plant inside. I do sometimes revel in being a little bit unconventional, and carrying a plant pot through the streets was therefore quite appealing. But then, I do also get a bit held back by self-consciousness; I could never be post-conventional. So I suppose I also wanted the plant to be seen because if there wasn't an unusual object inside the bag, then I was carrying it in what was almost certainly a socially abnormal way for no apparent reason. I was making absolutely no use of the handles. In fact, I also carry in this fashion when a bag is heavy on account of being full of books from the University Library, but then the bag is usually made of clear plastic to make sure that we don't try and steal any, which circumvents the visibility problem.

I had set off a little early in order to be able to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee on the station's platform before getting on the train. I'm not sure why the platform was part of the coffee equation rather than my seat on the train, but the contrast between crisp-air-on-cheeks and hot-coffee-on-lips when I did drink seemed to congratulate me on the choice. The other people on my bench were early too, and so we all sat together in silence for about ten minutes, during which time the rush of people crossing in front of us to and from trains seemed like a pressure wave pushing us back into a little corner of intimacy. It seemed a bit like we were having a very personal conversation as we looked out at the people intently from our bench with our hot drinks. They all had the opposite idea about their drinks. They all held them in front of them as they marched ahead, leaning slightly forwards from the waist. I began to suspect the drinks were actually pulling them forwards, what with the way they clutched onto them so tightly, and how they seemed so very serious about their train-catching task. What a disaster it would be if they were to drop it. Undoubtedly they would stand entirely still and look at all the trains in total bemusement. Perhaps then they would notice the bench and decide it would be nice to have a little sit down.

As I put down the rose bag on the third train of my cross-country route, the bag broke. I folded it and placed it on the table top as a mat for the pot so as not to spread the soil everywhere. Now everyone was able to admire the rose, and when finally I arrived, I carried it out in front of me to my mother who was waiting on the platform.

down and up

In a narrow street in Cambridge there is a hole in the tarmac in the shape of an elongated heart. Around the corner, when the light fades from the sky the sundial high up on the church wall tells the time of the orange lampposts' night. Sometimes I look down and sometimes up.

Recently I have been using my old inline rollerblades to get from A to a range of other letters, and so now the pavement has a new meaning. Now I feel the down. The pavement has more texture than it did when I was just shoe soles and bicycle wheels.

It is incredibly smooth and I weave between the walking people without ever needing air to come between my wheels and the ground, only elements of the figure eight. And then it is slightly less glass-like, it is the sandstone paving stones, and the sound comes out in a strange wavering tone that sounds like ghosts are underneath. But then there are older paving stones with the deep cracks between, and if the weight is too far forwards you will trip, so you must sink back a little. You will never flow here, and the precision of where the next pushing step must fall absorbs everything. At the special paving stones made of little bobbles that tell the pedestrians where they should line up to cross the road, if you hold your wheels in a very straight line for a while you can slip exactly between the bumps that otherwise would judder and jar through your legs and right up your back. Cobbled streets are obviously out of bounds. Then there is the road. Sometimes the road is so rough that the wheels cannot move with any pace and need constant, vigorous encouragement, even though your tremor-ridden legs ache for the glassy surface to come back.

Sometimes I look at my feet and sometimes at the sky. Now I feel with my feet. I want to feel the sky.

Run

Mother moved house. She moved when I wasn't there, but I've seen it now. We had Christmas there last year and that was the point at which it became a family house. We all helped to keep the fire lit, and the complex procedure of Christmas dinner was kept in check by a thorough list detailing the time-before-take-off of each person's part.
Mother's house has hills and woods now. I tried running through them last time I was there. At first there was a stream making enough noise to keep the footfall on leaves into a delicate but slightly frantic pattern. But then there were only woods and fields and all the focus settled on the ups and downs of the hill path so that the head felt it was ploughing through the softly muddy ground. I let the feet tumble down and down till we reached the road. The carving had already been done there. But then there were the lorries passing from behind with their invisible drivers, passing at such regular intermittence that in the quiet spells you could feel in your skin the next one growing in the distance behind until it was big enough to take its place in the air it would push past you.
The next day I ran in the other direction. I ran alongside a canal, and although it didn't have the rush of the stream, its quiet, steady companionship was more than enough. Sometimes the land at the side rose up or fell away, and sometimes a bridge wanted everyone to cross to the other side, but the path and the water stayed at the same level the whole time so that the feet and the eyes could go their separate ways. At times they were miles apart. At a certain point there was a tunnel. It wasn't that anything about the path changed. It was just that the land closed overhead so that the water on the ground glistened black and the thin splashes they made shot back from the roof to accentuate the tentativity of the feet. Once I was through the tunnel there didn't seem to be any point in continuing further so, a little more confidently this time, I plunged back into the darkness and ran home.

Calculators for kids!

At home now with my love of calculators, it is time to share them with the children. Yes, the children.
The Whipple Museum has a wonderful wealth of calculating tools from the past few centuries of the western world. There are slide rules (including groovy circular and cylindrical one which boost up the multiplication power), abacuses, tiny little Napier's bones, big clunky mechanical calculators from the early- to mid-twentieth century, little stylus slide adders and Curta calculators (exceptionally cool) from the 1950s. And of course, a bordering-on-incredible number of hand held electronic calculators from the 1970s and early 80s, some remarkable for being the first of some kind or other (scientific, programmable, touch sensitive, etc), some remarkable for being sensually either thrilling or distasteful to a high degree, some for visual flair, some utterly unremarkable apart from their adding to the general impression of the sheer quantity of these things that so flooded the markets, and some that from a great distance look like flies.
Via the medium of the video-conference, I am going to talk about these tools of calculation to classes of 12-14 year olds, from four different schools all at once. Magic. Then they are going to get together in little groups and do their own research project on them, including designing a mathematical game based on their tool, and in a second video-conference they can present the fruits of their labour to me and the other classes so that we can all discuss. Hopefully it will be fun and give them happy enthusiasm beans.

Silence of

Silence of the children-thought
as blown on carriage train to nought,
with buckets from the mind-well slowly
brought to stretch the light of dusk where
shadows pierce a heart of sorts
and salt marks out the eyes.
Smite not now the over-pass,
where thundered air can breathe at last,
where distance flies us close enough for
bruised lips to return to laugh
and delight is compromise.

calculator central

1st prize for style (purely visual): Sinclair, most particularly the Sinclair Sovereign. It doesn't get much better than that. Its keys, unfortunately, are sensually crap.

1st prize for visual and tactile finesse: Texas Instruments, particuarly the TI-1050. Not abundant with flair, but classy with the black cases and pale gold brushed aluminium key panels with plain black keys. It has a solid, trustworthy feel to it in the hand. Too many calculators had too many different coloured keys.

Parameters of touch: calculators are go.

On seeing a clunky, quirky, sleek or sexy calculator from the 1970s in a museum or in a museum catalogue, surely you would be disappointed not to be able to reach out and touch its eminantly clickable keys. I know I would.
And yet here I am, in a museum workspace, with 436 such calculators at my fingertips, making our database ready to publish a catalogue of the collection. I could help you. I could give you vicarious calculator sensuality.
So, I am not merely recording dates and what type of battery these things took; I have devised a language system.
To try and make it clear, I made a few semi-artificial parameters of the act of pressing these little keys .
First is the length of travel: how far the keys can be depressed. This works out simply as short-, medium-, or long-travel. Texas Instruments are generally very short travel, for example.
Next is the process of depressing the keys. Just like the keys of a piano, those of a calculator can be differently weighted. Degrees of resistance. Thus the keys vary between being very light and very heavy to the touch. Some of them require serious finger power. Some are so light you hardly knew you pressed them, and then some, like the Sinclairs, seem so heavy that perhaps the calculators are only meant ot be viewed. Of course, Sinclair can get away with that: theirs are the only calculators that actually pass as sexy, especially the Sovereign.
During depression, the keys may also be 'squashy'. Casio keys are a typical example of this. Note that lightness to the touch is necessary but not sufficient for squashiness.
Then we come to the behaviour of the keys at the end-point of depression. It became fashionable to make calculators whose keys clicked upon depression in the 1970s (in the marketing blurb this was a 'positive click'... helping you have a positive calculator experience, of course). But there are all manner of types of click: it could be soft, muffled, loud or prominent; it could be dull, bright, flimsy, hollow, metallic, or could even give a faint rattle. Some manufacturers ignored clickiness entirely; their keys, in my language, have 'a soft manner of depression'. Decimo tend to be like this. The phrasing here is a little awkward I know, but it is better than my earlier solution, where the keys simply had 'soft depression'. Poor things.
Finally comes the behaviour of keys on their return. They can be increadibly springy and bouncy on some makes. Surprisingly, springiness seems to be almost entirely unrelated to squashiness. A key that squashes limply on depression can suddenly spring straight back out at you on release: a remarkable feat if ever I saw/felt one.
Shape comes into this as well, but only insofar as some are concavely shaped to the finger.
Throughout all of this I have tried to refrain from normative language. Some calculators have such utterly crap keys that quite frankly I'd prefer to take the calculator to bits and gawk at its groovy interior than actually use the damn thing. (Actually its getting to the point where I want to do this to most of the calculators, invalidating my attempt at abuse, but you get it, I'm trying to be emphatic here: some of their keys suck). And then some calculators, some calculators have dream keys. They really do. I want to use language like 'perfectly' weighted, and ridiculous things like a 'delightful click.' But I try not to talk in those kinds of terms. I'm trying to be objective about this. Ha!