9January1996

My dear folks,

I have been reading about the Mandelbrot Set. Lest you take this as your ue to go and walk the dog, let me hasten to assure you that it’s harmless. It’s a marvel of graphic universes, generated on a computer by a relatively simple formula. Magnifying a tiny portion of the picture reveals an identical baby universe which contains an identical baby universe at infinitum. It’s just about the only concept I have grasped in the first 100 pages of Roger Penrose’s book about the nature of numbers & computers. I do wish I found Mathematics more sympathetic. What is clear to me is that God is a mathematician & that the universe has mathematics at its core. My chances of cracking its secrets, sadly, remain dim, at least during this incarnation.

We supped early, a tasty dish of goo whipped up by Jones & taken with a little red wine for the health. Waking at 5.30 as I’m required to do this week, means I’m ready for bed by 9 p.m. Trouble is that I wake again in the early hours & then fall asleep just before the alarm shatters the night. Misery me! Fortunately, this is set to continue only until Friday.

It rained all last night, plonking solidly on the skylight & easing off as I set off on my bike in the dark this morning. I took a change of clothing & needed it. I was soaked from perspiration when I waded into the newsroom. It’s dried up this evening. The temp’s up around C10*, quite human after the deep freeze last week.

Our tickets arrived today for a ferry trip we have booked to France towards the end of this month. It’s a period when the ferry companies offer bargain basement fares to tide themselves over until the summer. Including a cabin on the way out, the cost amounts to a total of only £35. We drive to Southampton, leave the car there, take an overnight trip to Cherbourg, spend a night there & come back the following day.

Naturally, the companies bargain on tourists spending a great deal more in Duty Free & are seldom disappointed. We have fingers crossed that the weather is kind. It’s the time of year for storm-tossed Channel Crossings which is why they go for silly prices.

The holiday programme showing on television crosses to Lake Louise where elated visitors are shown enjoying the delights of heli-skiing. Moments later they hop on a sled & are dragged off for a ride by eager huskies. Bamph’s classiest hotel overlooks the lake & a sun, shot through with six-pointed rays, gleams in a sea-blue sky. Tourists tell us it’s the greatest & that the Canadians are the friendliest people. The guide is honest enough to inform us that temperatures are seriously brass monkeys. We knew that anyhow. The image merges and we’re in Italy. That’s television for you.

You can see that not much has happened in my day other than eight hours of fairly frantic production. I have decided that the metaphor for news television is taking off in an aircraft while the wings are still being attached. You hope enough rivets are driven in to secure the wings to the fuselage before the plane lifts off. Sometimes there are & the passengers don’t know the difference. Sometimes there aren’t & the screen goes black. I’m definitely coming back as an heir in my next life, or maybe as a large Chacma baboon.

Blessings for now,
T