Airplanes and red shoes

Let's start with a riddle: What do aeroplanes, sugarlumps and red dancing shoes have in common?

No, sorry, you can't have the answer yet.

This blog is all about aeroplanes, and some worries I have...

Now don't get me wrong, I love flying. Rollercoasters and football matches do nothing for me: when I'm looking for excitement, the buzz is best when that juddering aircraft leaves the tarmac, and I'm flying off to somewhere new and exciting. And as for the feeling I get when I'm up in the sky looking down on the clouds. Well, if you ask me, it's quite obviously magic, and it's marvellous!

But a friend sent me this video, and it has made me think that maybe we're doing just a little bit too much flying. Have a quick look at it before you read on (if you haven't already) so you'll know what I'm talking about...

Now, at one level, I think the video is rather beautiful. It reminds me of other things, like ripples and magnetic field patterns and the dances that bees do to find their way home. But these are aeroplanes, not bees.

Do you know how many flights there are, globally, each day or each year? Go on, have a guess...

The most reliable source I could find on t'interweb said there were 77 million flights in 2008, and numbers are rising. 77 million each year?! That's about 211,000 flights each day! And there were 4.874 billion passengers... Which, frankly, is such a BIG number that my poor brain can't even process it.

Now, I could go off on all sorts of interesting diversions about global economics ('cos this many passengers equals one hell of big pile of dollars, dunnit?!) and international development inequalities ('cos look at how the flight-paths predominantly zoom in and out of the US and Europe) ... But the big question this video has raised for me is about saturation.

Saturation, I hear you say. What, if you please, is saturation? Or rather (given that my readers are educated people) what on earth has saturation got to do with air traffic?!

Let me explain myself...

Saturation is what you get when you try to add too much of something to something else. So, you can add sugarlumps to tea, and go on adding them for a long time, making your tea sweeter and sweeter... But there comes a point where your tea can't absorb anything else; and if you go on trying to add sugar, it won't dissolve, and you'll get a lumpy mess. You see, the tea has reached its 'sugar saturation point', and it just can't take any more.

There are lots of other examples where a little bit of something is fine, but too much is not. The odd whisky (or wine or beer or whatever your tipple) is great, but too much alcohol becomes a problem. And a little bit of food down the plughole is OK when you are washing up, but half a plateful will block your pipes!

I suppose I'm worried that we might just have reached our 'aeroplane saturation point'. At least, I'd like to know what or where this point is. Perhaps 55 million planes a year was OK, but 77 million isn't. Or perhaps 78 million is OK, but 79 million will be too many. Do you get my drift? It would be useful to know, wouldn't it, just how many aeroplanes the planet can cope with.

Now, at the risk of getting all earnest here, maybe we should be asking the same question about everything we do, at a personal and global level. Basically, the question is, how much is enough?

Do you know The Red Shoes fairytale? I may tell you more about it another time, but for now, all you need to know is that the central character loved her red shoes so much that she wore them too often, and went dancing in them when she shouldn't have, and then couldn't stop dancing until someone cut off her feet with an axe.

And that, in a nutshell, is what aeroplanes, sugarlumps and red dancing shoes have in common. When it comes to things we like, we're not good at knowing when enough is enough.

And no, I'm not being puritanical.

You know I have an interest in go-going with the flow, dontcha? Well, so, I'm not saying don't dance; I'm saying we need to know when to stop, if we want to go-go with joy. Dance all night if you like, but make sure you can stop when you want, without needing someone to chop your feet off!

So if any of you know how to work out the global aeroplane saturation point, please let the rest of us know!

Flow x

wild about swimming!

I'm feeling very happy this evening. Mmmmm.

Why? 'Cos I have been swimming here today - and yesterday too - making the most of the fabulous weather we've had this weekend!

'Wild' swimming is one of my top pleasures in life.

There's not much more I can say about this, really, 'cos the joy is all in sensations not words. But I will say this: if you haven't swim in a lake or paddled your toes in a stream recently DO IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

Flow x

P.S. If anyone is thinking that it looks a little bit autumnal in this pic, you're right. It's an old one... When I go down here on a summer's day, I'm much too busy swimming to be taking photos!

The electronic locker room

I need to start by saying: I am a woman. If you don’t already know this, it is important that you should, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment.

I know, infuriating, aren’t I? Sorry.

I’m waffling a bit, because I’m afraid this could be the most redundant blog post ever written. You’re here on Blogger, aren’t you, so the chances are you’re on Facebook too, and quite possibly other online places like Twitter and MySpace and YouTube and Flickr and Wordpress. There’s probably not much I can tell you about the online world that you don’t already know.

We like to hang out online these days, don't we, keeping in touch with old friends and making new ones. Social networking, it's called... Though you probably already knew that!

I wonder, though ... Have you ever thought about social networking and gender? About the different ways that men and women use sites like Facebook and Twitter?

I’m sure there’s a Ph.D. in the subject, but don’t worry, I’m not going to pretend to be erudite here. I just want to share a few idle and unscientific thoughts…

I joined Twitter a few weeks ago. (If you’re interested, and you haven’t already found me, you can follow me @gogowiththeflow). And being a thoughtful and reflective sort, I noticed fairly soon that most of my followers are men. It’s not that I don’t have women friends – I do – it’s just that hardly any of them are on Twitter. They’re all hanging out on Facebook.

I was interested in this apparent gender difference, so I started looking for some figures. And it’s

Officially True that Facebook has more women users than men. It’s much harder to be sure about Twitter, because you’re not asked to identify your gender there, so anyone who tries to work it out has to guess from the usernames.

(Would you have guessed I was female from the name @gogowiththeflow? What about @scribblemoose? Or @syzygy or @steeluloid or @irevdrdab?)

Anyway, that’s a diversion… My point is this: It seems to me that Facebook is as full of female chat as my corner coffee shop, while Twitter is a sort of electronic men's locker-room!

There's another difference too: the people who are my Facebook friends are (mostly) my real-life friends and neighbours. But on Twitter, my followers are much more likely to be people I know through work or even total strangers. So while idle chat is going on in both places, it has a different audience: the Tweets I see tend to be updates, information and fairly neutral comments about what's going on, all self-policed to make them 'safe' for any audience; while the Facebook status updates seem much more intimate.

Then a colleague of mine made an interesting observation. He's off to a conference soon, where he'll meet lots of people he's previously 'met' through Twitter, and he'll be able to start conversations with them easily because he knows something about their lives. And it reminded me that men have always been comfortable linking their work lives and their social lives in this way - building relationships in smoke-filled clubs and in five-a-side football teams.

While the women I know usually keep their work lives and their home lives very carefully separate.

Now I've crossed this line, and people who are my collegues and acquaintances but not my friends know something about my personal interests and my weekend pursuits. It's not entirely comfortable to be hanging out in the electronic locker room ... But at least I can't smell any sweat!


Flow x


P.S. I dunno whether this is just a strange peculiarity, true only for my friends and followers, or whether it’s true for you lot too. Let me know what you think!

Money can't buy you love-or votes!

Just a little thought here: BBC Radio 4 told me yesterday that the Tories received £1.46 million in donations in the first week of this election campaign, and the Lib Dems received £20K... If we assume the donations are all being spent on campaigning (oh, and we do the maths), we can see that each percentage point of support is costing the LibDems (on 30 percent) about £665 and the Tories (on 33 percent) more than 66 times as much!

I had a dream!

No, I'm afraid it wasn't as profound as Martin Luther King's dream; it was a real, mundane dream, about an hour ago. And it woke me up.

Other people's dreams are pretty boring, so I'll paraphrase... I was writing an outline for a new TV series. But I there were other people around and I was due to go out somewhere, so I there were too many distractions to write. Plus I needed to get my younger son to hurry up, and I couldn't, so I was going to miss whatever it was I was supposed to be going out to do. It all led to pretty familiar feelings of frustration. Life getting in the way of art, again!

When I woke, feeling rather disgruntled, I spent quite a few minutes trying to remember the details of the TV outline so I could write it down - now that all the distractions had stopped. It didn't really dawn on me that it had all been a dream until I was awake enough to realise that there was nothing, really, to remember.

I was in a bad mood because mundane things had stopped me from doing something I wanted to do, but which I hadn't really been doing anyway!

Hang on to that thought for a moment...

Anyway, Ladles and Jellyspoons, you will have noticed that I have been away for Quite Some Time. I could give you an-elephant-ate-my-homework type of explanation, but other people's excuses are just as boring as other people's dreams, so I won't. I'll just say that I have been in a Bad Mood.

This Bad Mood has lasted a long time (and it hasn't quite gone away yet, but never mind that for now). At the root of it, I realise, is frustration that mundane things have stopped me doing things I want to do. Ha - deja vu!

The things I want to do (the important ones that I'm not managing anyhow) are writing, swimming outdoors and enjoying some sunshine. But somehow other things have got in the way - things like earning money, housework, newly-diagnosed arthritis and rain.

The trouble is that after a while of not doing things for very good reasons, you get out of the habit of doing them. Then you feel frustrated about not doing things you want to do, although you are making no effort at all to do them anyway!

So... I haven't been go-going with the flow, I've been sort of limping along with the flow. Time to kick myself up the arse!

Anyway, I've done a bit of writing, and now the sun is up, so I'm off.

'Til later...

Flow x

P.S. You'll notice I've had some fun with this silly-but-clever fake newspaper creating tool!

Pucker up!

This sign recently appeared at a Warrington station. Civic leaders say kissing there "causes car park congestion".

Spoil sports! We need more love and affection in this world, not less, and I say smooching is worth a bit of a wait.

So wherever you are, strike a blow for the freedom of Warrington lovers. Go on: pucker up today!


Flow x

Imbolc is my favourite festival - a real celebration of optimism!

For those of you who don't know, Imbolc is a traditional Celtic festival, marking the beginning of spring. In our village, people celebrate with a fantastic fire show, with fire-swingers and other performers, including singers, drummers and dark Foxes who dance with fire. And at the climax of the spectacle, the Green Man battles Jack Frost - and always wins! - so that spring can arrive.

But since Imbolc is traditionally held at the beginning of February, spring is usually still a long way off. This year, snow began to fall here on the first of February, and by the night of the fire festival, it lay thick on the ground. I love the way everyone carries on and celebrates the arrival of spring, whatever the weather! The fireworks and performance are symbolic: there's light shining bright despite the dark, there's celebration and fun at a time of year that's generally pretty miserable, and there's promise of much better times to come.

Flow x