Name the trees that stood in the neighbourhood where you grew up.

Who names trees? I do have a special tree though. I mean that makes sense. It's in Buckhurst Hill and was by the pond next to the church. It's a magnificent tree with sprawling roots and big wide branches. I played under it lots of a child and I hold it in strong affection. I'd go to bat for that tree.

A storm destroys your uncle's shed and kills his six-year0old son. Describe the colour of the sky right before the storm hit.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche famously said; "If you look long enough into the void the void begins to look back through you." and so it was when I looked into the darkness of the oncoming storm. As I stared into its blackening heart it drew me in. Its promise of destruction lay heavy in the crackling air around me. It was not something that could be outrun and bunkering down and praying to a hundred non-existent Gods was the only thing to try.

Describe an electronic device in the future that you won't know how to operate.

I will ALWAYS be able to operate electronic devices, but when they finally achieve sentience I may well have to argue with them.

Describe something you wanted badly, and once got it, never used it.

A gun the shape of a shark. I wanted an advance on my pocket money to get it, but once it was in my little excited hands

Describe yourself in the third person-your physical appearance. and personality-as though you were a character in a book.

He sighed. Worked paid just fine but it was boring. What right did he have to complain? Many people's jobs were boring and they only paid enough to get by. He looked around the room for a distraction. Five skulls on shelf opposite looked back reminding him to seize the day. Perhaps he could get some toast? No, Christ-Almighty how much toast could he eat in one day. The healthier apple sat on the table with it's single bite mark slowly turning brown. Opening the lid of the laptop again he sighed again and ploughed on.

Pick a small object to be given one day to your great-grandchild. Write a letter to that child explaining why you have chosen this object.

 If it was a small object i'd say the piano. Well, look - you're getting that anyway. Both a lovely thing to have and an albatross around your neck.

So what do you get? Noakie. I'd hope by the time i've croaked Noakie will be eighty, and by exension so will I. When you have a toy for 98% of you life you can't help but wonder how long he'll be around after you're gone so this isn't something that's useful or perhaps something you'd want but I'd hope you'd look at him and think of me. You're his new custodian and you're to pass him down the line. I'd hope he'd outlast us all.

You have just swallowed your pride and done something you didn't want to do. Your friend wants to know why. The two of you are driving around an almost-full parking garage looking for a space for the friend's oversize pickup. Write the scene.

"Why did you bring your over-compensation-wagon?  It's the freaking size of Texas.  There are some states this beast wouldn't fit in."

"That's jealousy talking."

"We both know if we'd taken my car we'd be parked by now."

A muffled sound came from the back.  Neither looked into the back.

"I thought I was better than this."

"Oh my heart bleeds.  You knew there was no choice."

He started to look round to the back seat but felt a hand on his shoulder.

"No looking back."

"We couldn't take your car.  It wasn't big enough.  She'd have been cramped."

More muffled sounds and wriggling came from behind them.

"This will work, won't it?  They won't go back on their deal?  The swap will work, right?  

I'll get my wife back."

I have twelve inches of sharp metal in my glovebox if things start to go South.

"Oh Jesus Christ.  Why is this happening?"

"Because you took the deal."

"Never negotiate with terrorists.  I get it.  Why did I?  What choice did I have?"

"We always have a choice."

"No, sometimes we don't."

Tell a complete stranger about a beloved family tradition.

Hey there stranger.  So, we used to have many a happy holiday at a tiny little place by the sea in Cornwall.  We were on the beach one year and a brother and sister were arguing and the sister said to the brother; "You're in BIG trouble Dominic."  For reasons now lost to time we started to use that phrase as we continued our holiday.  It then followed us back home and we continued to use it.  "You're in BIG trouble Dominic."  Fifteen years or so later was Max was born and when he got older I started to use it with him.  So, a good thirty years on from that beach on Cornwall whenever anything of us utters that phrase we know what it means - and that makes me happy.  I do wonder what happened to Dominic and what he'd think if he found out how many times his name was uttered.

Write a scene were the only spoken dialogue is "Uh-huh", "Umm", "Urrrr, "Mm-mmm."

The outer clothes dropped to the floor.

"Uh-huh."

The final vestiges of modesty joined them.

"Umm."

He looked down at his puny body.

"Urrrr."

He looked at hers.

"Mm-mmm."

What a character holding a blue object is thinking right now.

"Okay, i've got it.  Now what?  Holy shit what have I done?  Okay, calm down - calm the fuck down.  If they find me with this i'm a dead man - well, when it all goes down i'd be wishing I was dead.  I can't leave it - and i'm too scared to take it with me.  What have I done?"

The long-lost room mate.

I've only shared a flat once.  I'd recently moved out of the family home to live in East London.  Girlfriend #1 and I had been joined by someone to share the costs (which, as I recall, were HUGE).  His name would remain anonymous, but since it's lost the to the mists of time that's dealt with.   He was - as I recall - a massive, inconsiderate tools.  Lost yet, but missed?  Not in the slightest.

Something you had that was stolen.

Call me goody-two-shoes if you like (no, don't) but i've never stolen anything.  "Oh, that's what you would say."  I really haven't.  Unless there's something i've blanked through shame or protection.

But, the question says I had it, not that I stole it.  Do I know for certain that I owned something that was stolen?  No.  That said i've bought enough stuff from charity shops over the years that it's conceivable that some of it could have been stolen, bought then donated.  I guess.  Who really knows where everything they have came from?

Tell a story that beings with a ransom note.

Aren't ransom notes made of a letters cut from newspapers?  This was a scrappy old piece of paper scribbled over in awful, spidery handwriting.

"Look at your hands and stare at your fingers.  Pick one.  Which one would you miss the least?  I want you to pick.  I'm going to give you two minutes to choose and if you don't give me an answer then i'm going to see which I prefer and i'll be picking two.  Put yourself in that position.  Are you doing it now?  Come 10am on Thursday morning that's the very question i'll be putting to little Simon unless you do exactly what I say."

You are an astronaut describe your perfect day.

So few people have ever gotten to see an Earth rise.  It's a thing that'll stay with you.  I've no doubt that you can imagine just how many new experiences you have the opportunity to experience whilst on International Space Station.  Just 221 of us have been aboard so far.  That's a pretty select bunch of lucky individuals.  But, my perfect day?  I could be flippant and say it's one were Joseph didn't tell as many jokes as often, but no.  A technical thing perhaps such as the toilets working better, but not that either.  Ultimately my best day would also be my worst day.  It's the day I have to leave all these amazing people and experiences behind but get to come back to my family.

Write Facebook status update states for the year 2017.

+ A terrorist attack on London was always going to happen.  I'm pleased no one got hurt.

+ Forgot my eggs were cooking and ruined my pan.

+ 45 today.  Kind of feels as though it's downhill from here.

+ I never saw an AI breakthrough happening that quickly.  I guess when you have AI working on AI you get exponential progress.

+ Can't believe the WHOLE internet went down last week.  Hope it's a one-off.

+ The virus killing off the coffee plantation is really pushing up the cost of coffee.  May have to start hoarding.

A houseplant is dying. Tell it why it needs to live.

Look, in some small way this is probably my fault. I'm your carer. I give you water and you're by the window in the sun. That's all you need, right? You have to take a small amount of responsibility in your own care. You and me are both in this together. We're both in this eco-system and like or not we support each other. I'm pumping out carbon dioxide, and you're throwing oxygen back. Pick those limp leaves up, hold your stalk up straight and get your photosynthesing groove on. We're counting on you.

 

Posted with Blogsy

The worst Thanksgiving dish you ever had

I'm British so I don't do Thanksgiving Day. It's a religious holiday and Lincoln said; "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens." Even if I wasn't an atheist I wouldn't do it because even if I believe there was a God, I'd still find the idea of thanking a God for a good life abhorrent. Does this imply a lack of gratitude? What it means that if you're thanking a god for,your great life and the abundance of food in front of you that means God looked at the starving Africans and every other deserving person on the planet and chose you above them. That's not something I think I'd ever feel comfortable doing.

Posted with Blogsy

What can happen in second?

My first thought was the rather obvious; "not much".  Pondering it further I supposed i'm thinking of a second very much on a human level.  Love at first sight perhaps?  It's not something I subscribe to, but maybe that's just me rather than the idea that it never happens.  A blink of an eye takes about a third of second so I could get three of those in.  The normal resting heart rate for a person is 70 beats per minute, so I could get a heartbeat in or do some exercise or get unnecessarily worried about get in a couple.  I suspect I can snap my fingers a few times in a second.

What about animals?  The fastest animal is the Peregrine Falcon which could move over one-hundred metres in a second.  I do wonder whether my maths is right on that one.  It seems awfully fast.

Moving onto non-meat based things the fastest computer (the Roadrunner) can process an astonishing quadrillion calculations in a second.  A quadrillion?  Well, that's 1,000,000,000,000,000.  I can't fathom such a number. To count from one to one quadrillion at one number a second would take - wait for it - 30,800,000 years.  You may be interested to know that a Quadrillion Seconds has a name. A Petasecond.  Whilst i'm on that topic (but off the main topic) the name for the longest number of seconds is Yottaseconds (32 quadrillion seconds).  Just so you know that a Yottasecond is the length of the half-life of Bismuth.  In case you were wondering.

The fastest thing in the universe is light - probably (some Italian scientists have speculated that perhaps Einstein could be wrong, but that's another topic).  In a second (in a vacuum) light would 299,792 kilometers, or 186,282.112 miles.