78 G

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vssuqGyaxrw&t=37s

Narration by the author -Kate A Hardy 

Soundscape by MarkLockett

After listening to a particularly worrying podcast about the declining rates of literature world-wide, notably the reading for pleasure element, due in large part to smart phones,  I remembered my short story Orwellian look at a possible near future, which at the time of writing had a strong element of tongue-in-cheek. But with increasingly dark events in the USA, well . . . it suddenly seemed oddly plausible, maybe not the half man/half vehicle character, but who's to say . . .

  

Birthday events

Nothing like going to see Black Midi play Wembley, or eating in a Michelin starred restaurant, rather more low key but no less enjoyable - by my reckoning anyway.

Tea and presents at 6:30, featuring very cool grey astrachan slippers - not often in one sentence - cool and slippers, but they are. 

Mini road trip/psychogeographical exercise - looking back at our house (on a hill) from an equally elevated section of forest that we see from our bedroom window; after which, sweet chestnut collecting/dog walk in said very lovely woodland. 

                                                    Our house - somewhere on that hill line.

                            

                                             very old sweet chestnut tree and less old husband

Lunch in a genuine 'le routier' truck stop restaurant - three/four courses, if you can fit cheese in too, for sixteen euros a head. It was recommended by our electrician, and he was right - super friendly service, copious food, too copious - the dog will be happy tomorrow lunchtime.

Back home for a post-lunch snooze, followed by a trip to the dump (whoopee) to take a car load of smashed up ceiling plaster; and a visit to Aspire, one of our amazing local recycling emporiums. Result, two winter coats of an excellent make, CDs inc a limited edition of The Pet Shop boys, grey wool trousers, and a complete 1970s Breton dining table and chairs, delivery of said furniture, all for around a hundred euros.

Hoxton and Jarvis would be proud of us - (main Londonia characters). 

Our lad sent me a hand made birthday card featuring his many mad facial expressions. Love it.

Loads of lovely birthday texts and phone calls. Thank you lovely friends and family. 

Now off to see a film. I might even have an ice cream. Or not. Lunchtime is very much still with me, plus the birthday cake Mark made.

-----------------------------------------------------

P.S: we did see the film (One battle after another), and I didn't sleep much after it. Incredible production by Paul Thomas Anderson - he of the brilliant, There will be Blood, and weirdy, creepy, hilarious, Magnolia.

I think Leonardo De C utterly excelled himself as the hyper wound up, booze-infested, bomber with a big heart. The whole cast were amazing, and some of the road shots were just . . . well, that's why I didn't sleep. Hyper adrenalin rush!

Portrait

If I'd tried to set this up properly it wouldn't have worked, but as a phone-snap taken in a friend's sitting room with just the right amount of 'Vermeer' sidelight it was a happy accident. I probably should have moved the basket of towels, perhaps added a few relevant-to-Mark books to the table, but sometimes no thought is better.

        Mark Lockett. Composer, pianist, audiobook producer, cake maker, and general polymath.

Jobs I couldn't do but like the idea of

I always loved climbing trees as a youngster, something that went on long after I should have been practising cool, experimenting with make-up etc. More recently I scaled our huge and ancient pear tree at the previous, previous house to prune it back, but I can't quite imagine doing that now - a few years on, due to having done far too much heavy work on the last house project. 

At our now-house, there is a beautiful pine tree which shades us in summer, provides bird-shelter and give us cones for fire lighting; however it is/was extremely tall and during gales would thrash and bend alarmingly, and as the house would be a direct hit I thought it was time to invite in a tree specialist. Also, our house insurance guy had shrugged at my mention of the tree even though we had bought extra insurance to cover any eventual tree-house-debacle. 'It is your responsibility to manage the tree, madame'. So . . . not exactly sure what the extra house insurance was for . . .   

The tree-guy arrived yesterday morning, and after moving his van in, and partaking of a coffee, he donned a harness and zipped up the tree as agile as a marmoset. We'd had a quick word about not lopping the top off as if Goliath had done a touch of strimming, and he'd said, 'of course, Madame, I will sculpt it so it looks natural', and he did, swinging in circles from the already sawn top section grasping the chain saw and lopping as he went. 

An hour later he was clearing up the branches, the birds had returned to scoff sunflower seeds and it was as if nothing had happened except the tree is now five meters shorter. 

 

Global, semi conscious, mutually assured suicide

Or, in my mind, the potential overuse of Artificial Intelligence, and more worryingly, Artificial General Intelligence. 

And not really global. Not everyone in every country is waving on this madness; very far from it. Where's the choice, the voting, the real information? Hey, would you like clean drinking water or would you rather the water was diverted into that town-sized silver building over there that you can probably see from the moon? Or, would you like to continue using heating? or shall we divert everything from this brand new nuclear plant into your local data centre?

And, not mutual. Just a race to see who can get to creating something unbearably powerful and unknown with no apparent off switch, where there will be more money. F*#$ everything else. AGI will of course sort it all out. Even how to construct water, as most of what we have left seems destined to end up cooling ever increasingly enormous data centers.

We might actually be living in a Douglas Adam's novel. But without the humour element.

Having listening to many lectures and podcasts by people (scientists /professors) who actually spend all their time researching and exploring these subjects I feel I know just about enough to feel extremely scared. They certainly are.

As one researcher put it, AGI could be undeniably useful if it had a narrow usage, for example, solely investigating and suggestion solutions for say a certain type of cancer - and within rigid guidelines and and following an actual brief. Well, he didn't say that word for word, but it's what I could extrapolate . . . rather than a full on massive free for all - everything from how to lose pounds unbelievably quickly without having to self-amputate a limb; how to convince people that you are highly intelligent without the trouble of learning anything (ah - that's already out there), make your own film of world leaders dancing with each others' entrails, or how to build a car from vegetable peelings - actually that last one would be rather useful. Etc.

Imagine if all this human ingenuity and energy could be put to solving the real problems that threaten to wipe out out our maligned species (and all our fellow species, although I suspect tics, hornets and cockroaches would continue to thrive, along with bunker-dwelling billionaires). Imagine the greening of cities, efficient water capture, affordable, ecological housing; new ways of growing real food for everyone; a kickstarted education system where kids learn real hands on skills, and learn to appreciate this world rather than a generated unreal one. Real learning rather than a quick cheat. Re-learning to share this planet with fellow humans, and re-learning how to appreciate the mega complex natural system that underlies absolutely everything about life on this extraordinary space-sphere.

I suspect, left to their own devices, which ever AGI becomes sentient first, they'll just think: Right. What an utter mess . . . let's find the Homo Sapiens off switch. World wide no-cure virus? or, oops, nuclear holocaust . . . just have a cup of tea first.

At the end of our road . . .

It's usually been a corner shop or a hill or a maize field or a busy intersection of road but this time it's a chateau that surveys the landscape of the Loire Valley. Every time I pass by its towering form I think about what it must have witnessed over the hundreds of years, currently mostly various wine/horse/night film festivals, less of the marauding, arrows and boiling oil of the distant past. And the future . . .? we'll be around a while to see - no intention of moving, again!

 

New departure, and celebratory road trip.

The lad has been living with us on and off for most of his life - pause of three years for art college, another couple of years for carpentry/leatherwork training, but basically he's been part of our lives from breakfast through to teatime, (tea/Dad's cake) to supper and through to 'goodnight' for most of twenty-seven years.  

So, it's time. He has a new life-chapter in Tours, living with his girlfriend, an uncertain future in some form of engineering, preferably with trains, or perhaps using one of the skills that he has already amassed. Uncertain but exciting. I know he'll be fine; he's not afraid to work in any job but is hopeful of finding something he would really like to do, that helps others in some way. It's not about making money for money's sake, and for that, amongst many other things, we are proud of him.

We haven't had time recently for a him and me road trip - see many previous older posts - but yesterday, work behind him, and me appreciative of a break from DIY, we set off in an easterly direction, following the meandering Loire.

Rules of road trip are stated somewhere a few posts back but basically, you get a bit lost, stop for snacks, go off on tangents and support the other person's wish to look at old abandoned train buildings or swim in a keep out stretch of water or wander along a tree-shadow lane going nowhere. Luckily we share a love of the insolite - slightly odd, a bit eerie sometimes, a tad melancholic, unsung by any guide books, etc. this trip had a bit of all of it, including an ancient coal mine and associated slag heaps.

Challones sur Loire seemed a fairly ordinary French town but with its beautiful waterside it was well worth a long amble around, and lunch of Fish and Chips - sadly the antitheses of my favourite chippy - the Fryer's Delight in Holborn: small fish, small chips, and scrap of salad rather than mushy peas. Tasty enough but not really enough for a still-growing lad. We made up for it later after buying absurdly lovely cakes in St Florent le Vieil and sitting in a bar with cups of tea. The other towns we passed through and explored were fairly unremarkable but St Florent is certainly worth a detour with its mix of faded grandeur, ancient, boarded up charcuteries/hair dressers et al; panoramic views of the Loire, and the truly magnificent abbey overseeing the town.

                                                          waiting for fish and chips

Abbey of St Florent

We walked along afore-mentioned tree-shadowy lanes, crossed stepping-stoned river tributaries, admired flower filled water meadows and then returned to the car to make the return journey - a good, road trip style one of heading vaguely westwards though little villages and sunflower fields until the 'cats ears' of Saumur Chateau and the nearby water towers were visible on the horizon - now our compass points of home.

Today, Ezra is off on a bike trip with Dad, an equally relationship-confirming trip out. Later we will help him pack, and will feel that weird mixture of melancholic sadness but joy that he is making his next move to somewhere he wants to be. He's only up the road in effect, in the next city, not off on a world tour/moving to Australia. And we'll see him often, those times to be as precious as yesterday's road trip.

Good luck, our lad. 

Mona Lisa revisited

 During a quest for old crockery to use at our Londonia book launch back in 2020, I discovered one of my top ten favourite charity shop finds - a Mona Lisa plate handprinted by someone who had obviously taken much time to emulate a favourite image, but, some elements were a little . . . odd, which of course made it so appealing. Said artist had also created a plate featuring the equally famous 'Arnolfini portrait' by Jan Van Eyck. Suppressing a whoop of delighted laughter I scooped them up, paid for them and the rest of the china and left to continue setting up the book launch.

After the event, I returned all the china and glasses etc to the Oxfam shop but kept the two plates, wrapping them with great care for my journey home. They then graced two kitchens and for a while a third and current kitchen until Madame Mona sadly met the tiled floor in many pieces after a nail gave way. We were both weirdly devastated, the plate being as unique as the great work itself. "No," I said, "There must be a way to save her!" Too many bits to piece back but I kept two pieces, found an old picture frame, added a load of grout when we were doing floor tiling and stuffed the bits into it. Mark shook his head at this weird grey mess and suggested the bin, but I could still imagine a future for the work of art.

More grout later, plus beads, ecclesiastical blue paint, bits of old postcards, gold paint ring/necklace etc and I think Leonardo would have been mildly impressed, or perhaps utterly horrified, or collapsed with laughter. 

Sea-fix

My getting in the river being curtailed due to low water level meant I was keening to swim in a big expanse - preferably the sea. We are two hours or so away from the Atlantic coast which is doable in a day or better still overnight to experience multiple swim episodes. 

Having a 'superhost' B and B voucher at my disposal I searched around my favourite bit of the coast - Le Pouligen. Short notice and the only logements available were either 'sleeps twenty with wave machine- pool and gym, etc, or stuff that looked like a dentist's waiting room but with less allure. 

Pornichet seemed to have a bit more choice so I opted for a friendly looking room in someone's house, used my voucher and booked it, to then be told that she'd forgotten to update her calendar so the room was taken. I'd by then reserved my train journeys so hunted around again and found . . . a boat. Slightly disconcerted about lack of loo on board - only because night trips up a pontoon gangplank might be a tad worrying when half asleep - but I booked it and thought what the hell, I'll pee in a bottle.

wrong port

I arrived in Pornichet and wandered as I do without checking where the port was. Went the wrong way for a couple of miles, followed someone's instructions to then turn up at an expanse of tidal mud with boats lying drunkenly to one side. The sun had disappeared and the whole scene looked rather dystopian. Just as I resigned myself to thinking what an interesting experience it would be to sleep on a vessel as it gradually righted itself with the tidal swell my phone rang. The B and B host was wondering if I was lost - she'd kindly offered to allow me to board the boat some hours before the stated time. I described the muddy scene and she informed me that I was at the wrong port.

                                                                           right port

I hurried to where I could now see a host of masts and collection of 70s buildings and met her where I should have if I'd read her message . . . duh. This was more like it: all boats upright, gently swaying, orderly lines, and there it was, the smallest vessel in the port; a perfect little sailing yacht amongst a gluttony of huge plastic white ocean-going versions of camper vans. The host was obviously in a hurry, probably due my mal-orienteering She showed me what to do and what not to do, gave me the code for the loo/showers/pontoon gate and left.

Interesting (?!) bit of mural and 70s port architecture - whole place is up for a makeover from September 25

B and B boat

next door's boat with its own boat

A couple of hours later I was hooked on the whole thing, even if I wasn't actually going anywhere on the sea. I'm pretty sure in the last life I must have been a fisher-person or similar, living on the Bretagne coast - my name (Hardy) if after all, Breton! 

I explored, swam, ate in the local fish café, napped with the gentle sea sway; and the following morning woke with the dawn, swam at 6:30, dried on the deck with a cup of tea brewed in a mug and then walked/sketched all day returning to doze when required.

                                                                    best swimming place 

Due to the generous host I didn't have to leave until later afternoon making the whole mini-trip feel like a few days. Found myself checking how much it costs to moore a boat, just in case we ever wanted to really downsize. Not sure where the piano would go however.

Affirmation

After all those months of reading, recording, mixing, editing, nearly throwing the computer our of the window, weeping, howling with laughter, dreaming of the finished product, and finally pressing the Good-to-go for audiobook production button, we are starting to get excellent feedback. Some from dear friends, and some from unknown listeners; and today, one from someone who really knows his 'sound' stuff. Sir Robin Millar, CBE. The man with the golden ears - as named by Boy George.

I'd asked him a while back if he might have a chance to listen to Londonia - he'd enjoyed a couple of my short stories - and he said he would. He's a very busy man so I put the idea firmly on the mental back burner and got on with house renovation, working on paintings, planning the next audiobook, and life generally, until an email from Sir Millar this afternoon. 

  . . . Adored the whole thing conceptually and stylistically, Kate. I would compare it favourably to Gormenghast . . .

Both Mark and I are utterly rubbish at following up anything to do with statistics, demographics of listeners, possible earnings - ha ha, so the audiobook had somewhat slipped away into the cupboard of 'things we've done'. Mr Millar's comment has nicely shaken up our thoughts on the project, and given us a welcome bit of affirmation that it was, and will be, worth all the hard work.

Londonia the audiobook is available on Audible and other platforms. Link below.

https://kateahardy.com/londonia-audiobook

The Londonia audiobook team. Mark Lockett - sound design. Kate A Hardy - author and narrator.

A I rant

Just a very small one. I opened up Word this morning to write a few lines of my current writing idea and a chirpy suggestion appeared amongst the others that now seem to position themselves at the page header without fail. I don't so much mind the ones that say dull, potentially useful stuff like: write a cringy letter to your bank but 'write a witty post about a sailing trip' made me want to cancel Word immediately - but of course it's too damned useful, especially if you are dealing with publishing agents and the like.

Surely this making us all less curious, less willing to put the real work in, less autonomous, less human.

                                                   How we laughed over our chips. Blog post.

So, on a windy Tuesday last week, dressed in our blue and white sailing outfits, we boarded Alan's boat, only to find that a rat had eaten through a plank and that water was slowly filling the hull. Alan had looked up at the amassing storm clouds, shrugged and said, Well, maybe it's a sign. We could have all died out there. Let's go and get chips. So we did, and chortled about our near death Tuesday excursion.

Written by Sean the Word-bot. Or not. 

painting by a human: Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding (attributed to, so it could have been AI, but unlikely in 1850)

Inconsequential archeology

 Our new abode is somewhat mysterious in its history. The agent had muttered something about 1960 or 70s, but the electrician discovered wiring he reckoned to be from the 40s, or certainly the 50s. Apparently the building has been added to over the decades - as whatever family lived here had expanded, or the goat shed had been noted as a future extra bedroom, or . . . who knows, certainly the sellers didn't have much idea.

The oddest bit of the house is where I am working to create our bed and breakfast/family and friends logement. The windows and doors appear to be from the 30s, possibly a bit later. Maybe they took them from another building, or maybe there are parts of the house which really are that old. Some of the walls are of the local stone - tuffeau, and some are breeze block, and there's a ton of plaster covering everything in states varying from - wow, this is great plastering! through to - this really ought to come off and we start again. The latter is in the bedroom I am painting/filling/painting. Proper builders like our friend Kevin would shake his head at the dents and grooves I am allowing, but I know when it's all under its final coat and with furniture added it'll look quaint and pretty. No one will see the dinks, and if they do, they won't care as there will be too many other more interesting things to look at. Well, that's my theory.

The oddest of the oddest bit of the house - in said bedroom, is a corner coated in ancient creme gloss paint, interspersed with small squares of fluorescent pink paint, or possibly felt pen. There must have at one time been a small cooker here as there was a chimney flue - now gone, just an inspection chamber left. Also, a series of warped air vents which on further inspection - one was very warped so I took it out - seemed to be just sitting in the wall where no air could pass. Odd. Perhaps the 'builder' had told the house occupants that he had put in special new-fangled air grills which would assure ventilation, and had just tacked them on. We'll never know; there's certainly no 'before and after' photo album from that era.

Small and odd bedroom which will be cute and art-filled

other end featuring the mysterious air grills 

And with its earlier layers of 70s/80s paper/gamelan gong storage area

The most unknown bit of archeology is yet to come. We may or may not re-do the hideous outside tiles which resemble slabs of composite ham, but as I've had an eye-watering quote probably not. Not this year anyway. Unless Londonia suddenly gets a film deal. Which might not be 100% impossible . . .

The tale of an old wardrobe, and a new bedroom

No one wants them - old, dark wood wardrobes. They sit lined up in our local favourite recycling emporium aware perhaps that the chipboard melamine versions seem to come and go with rapidity. I sort of understand it - if you're looking for light and airy/modern, but we never are. Old, oak, carving, history, craftsmanship; something you can gaze at with a cup of tea in bed and wonder who made it and how long it took them. 

Our latest purchase ( I have to stop myself buying all of them) was an extraordinary carved wardrobe which must be a couple of hundred years old, and is probably a Breton marriage wardrobe judging by the info I tracked down. It cost thirty euros . . . less than an Ikea footstool, and was delivered by afore-mentioned emporium taking the grand total to forty-five euros. 

With an idea of transforming it into a sort of 'fitted' cupboard system, our builder friend took it apart (impossible to get it up the stairs), reassembled it and added shelves made from another salvaged wardrobe, also oak but from the 40s. Mark added shelves on the other side, a few baskets bought and we have fitted furniture that might have caused the original carpenter to sigh with incomprehension but has made us very happy to inhabit the room.

when we first saw the house

                                                    New bedroom featuring the wardrobe

Artificial Insidiousness

I am perhaps a semi-luddite. I accept that certain technological breakthroughs have been invaluable - the wheel for example 😉 . . . and of course a thousand other things, but after listening to a John Oliver episode this morning my creeping dread of AI turned into abject disgust. Not because of it per se, more the people exploiting its uses for financial gain - well, what a surprise. It could of course - if everyone behaved like they cared about forging a more fair and caring world community - be impossible-to imagin-ly useful. For ecology, food production, health care, and possibly solving many man-made messes before madame nature boots us all off this overheating sphere. 

                                            An AI engagement-hacking shrimp Jesus/slop/spam 

However Mr Oliver's excellent observations were on the subject of A1 slop. Something even I have been aware of, slithering into my Instagram 'feed' - God how I hate that word within an internet context. I've cut down to about ten minutes a day - there are some wonderful and beautiful things on there: collections of rare film snippets, great gardening/cooking suggestions,  hilarious rubbish, glimpses into the lives of people living in very different places, etc, BUT there is also a growing amount of total crap, still obvious to the human eye as AI content - if you take more than the average three seconds to examine it closer. The really shocking revelation is that there are people out there selling online courses on how to produce this shit in the hope of a post becoming viral, and therefore gaining cash. How have we got to a point so removed from human ingenuity? Youtube for example used to be experimental, mad and glitchy - me and son still sing bits from the heartwarmingly creative and eccentric Fishcake video, sadly taken down some time ago. 

     Just one of AI's super recipe ideas

This morning, Mark showed me a post on Facebook of a plate of greasy, cheese-infested . . . stuff. 

"I keep getting content like this." 

I suggested clicking on the profile photo which revealed an unhealthily perfect-looking asian woman holding book of recipes. 

"It's not real - she's not real."

"Uh?

"Look at her face - and the book's font is all to cock. And - would a skinny Asian woman really be suggesting cooking stuff with four pounds of cheddar in it?"

"Oh . . . yes. I see."

There's been increasingly large amounts of oh . . . yes. Even the fabulous picture of a mass of storks nests I saw on time-evaporation-gram this morning suddenly seemed doomed with possibly fakery, so much that I suddenly felt supremely stupid and taken in. Slop will not get me. I'll 'tune in' to watch a few favorite content producers - see The Functional Melancholic, a few posts back, or historical, philosophical docs, etc, or allow my ten minutes for laughs on I Gram, but that's it. I'll get left behind. So what? I'll be ready with books and a radio when it all implodes (see my own theories in Londonia et al).

Talking of which. After listening to Mr Oliver I went into the garage, brushed the dust off our previous house-owner's RADIO, plugged it in and revisited the joy of instant, live discussion. No blue tooth faffing, no ads about pool robots - even though we don't have a pool - weight loss programs, and online spiritual courses. 

Also, featured below, a book - I know . . . I sound irritatingly oldie but sinking yourself into a phone screen just isn't the same. English Pastoral - I am currently glued to is beautiful, heart rending, inspirational and thoughtful, from an author who has lived through the upending of real agricultural practices and is piecing back the good stuff from the past to make his family farm survive, with our natural world/humanity's survival foremost in mind.  

                                                                https://kateahardy.com/

Living on the route of Vélo Vintage

So, when we bought the new abode back in April, no one mentioned that about 2,000 cyclists dressed in 20s/30s/40s garb would cycle past our house for the weekend of 'Vintage Vélo', one of Saumur's festival which has been running for fourteen years. Next year we'll do a lemonade stand, but Mark has been out  with his accordion entertaining (yes, they did like it!) and encouraging the cyclists to complete the 34 km or so; maybe not an enormous length but in the heat of 38 or so, yes, it's a lot.

                    Mark and our super neighbour, Nico, entertaining the two wheeled passers-by

We went down into town last night - stalls of vintage clothes everywhere, booze flowing and some really great music. Think we might go again later this evening, if we can dig out some appropriate clothing.