Reflections on reflections

Van Gogh (1888) "The best thing I've done in pen and ink": Landscape with train

I'm off to see my mum in Scotland. I packed on Boxing Day evening. Lin made me a picnic. On Monday morning Oscar and I caught a 16 bus to New Street - just after 9.30; therefore free. Our nine hour journey to Inverness via Wolverhampton, Stafford, Crewe, Preston, Lancaster, Carlisle, Glasgow and Perth passed in an eventless blur of music, films and fleeting landscape, made the more dreamlike for wearing noise cancelling headphones - which muted mobiles, tetchy babes, intrusive intercom announcements, leaving only what I chose to hear and the soothing motion of the train - more vibration than sound. Van Gogh's 'Japanese' landscape near Arles - especially at 00.27 - seems lightly snowed like mine.  Train to the Highlands from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo             Having much larger windows than cars and certainly planes, trains present the entertainment of reflections in glass drifting from transparent to opaque. Gazing at the passing view on one side I glimpse myself and fellow passengers in my window. In a tunnel, and after sunset, that window becomes a mirror, reflecting the interior of the carriage, catching, in addition, the reflection of the window opposite. The picture becomes layered when, dashing from darkness, my window affords a panorama of the passing world, a reflection inside, and the reflection of the view on the other side of the train travelling in opposite direction; metaphysical possibilities in the multiple reflections of another train passing. It happens on the bus without the dramatic speed. The train rushes me, still, yet at giant's pace across the divided landscape.

My mother - Barbara Theodora Maine

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 The dominant narrative on the state of Greece is unassailed, or am I missing something? I've just read a brief overview with many links posted on Rebecca MacKinnon's and Ethan Zukerman's Global Voices about Greek bloggers' reactions, posted early 2010 by Asteris Masouras. He notes their relative silence. No-one seems to have emerged as the teller of another tale. I'm sucked into and drift along in the wake of an amiable economist-demographer called Edward Hughes who writes clearly and depressingly about the mess with graphics a child can follow from the Bank of Greece.

Credit dries up across the Republic

The people I find most intriguing, entertaining and even promising are not those who post for the dominant narrative - will feckless Greece recover with the stern help of the EU-IMF? - nor one's who wear T-shirts decrying the destructive character of global venture capitalism (where did they buy those?). I'm pretending to be a non-combatant; bewildered; watching on the sidelines, scratching my head; wondering 'What Is to Be Done?'

So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Rev 3:16

No. The most interesting are the people who say and write and film what they think and understand from moment to moment without striving too hard to create a bigger story. These are either entirely discrete idiosyncratic individuals. They might be sewing something that might come to look like a tapestry, part for the moment of a novel temporal gestalt - a useful idea to do with recognising the coherence of something new as opposed to simply a collection of disparate and possibly random parts of something or nothing. How many notes of a piece of music do I hear before I hear a tune or even something I recognise? How much of an utterance must you hear from a mouth before you know if it's a sneeze or a cough? How many words before we know what follows? Never...? Never in...? Never in the field....? Never in the field of human...? Σα βγεις ...? Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό....? Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη? How much does a new thing have to develop before it can be recognised as substantial rather than fleeting - the difference between the seedling of a tree and a flower as both break ground being indistinct. So let me take these for a start - Asteris Masouris who I've just come across, our friend Danica Radovanović who posts Digital Serendipities and who I met on the web because she shared a first name with the boat in which I once sailed to Greece, then Teacher Dude and BBQ, citizen-journalist in Thessaloniki, and my Birmingham friend of eleven years, Nick Booth who invented Podnosh and lots of things connected with it. These people - two who are friends, one just discovered in cyberspace and Craig Wherlock, otherwise Teacher Dude, who I've followed because of his images of the Greek crisis from Thessaloniki ('I take pictures since my greatest dread is that of being a bystander.'). They spread themselves across the social web, the personification of connectionism, hedgehogs rather than tortoises.

Πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα

In the highlands near Garbole (Photo: Guy Hollier, my son-in-law)

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow....

Working together

This is so very exhilarating. John and I have been selecting and analysing clips from his Australian videos in our shared apartment on the edge of Perth. Today we tutored the first event of our October-November tour. We're confident the first day's gone well, with spontaneous applause at the end. As lecturers and tutors we complement one another, as did the mix of Australian and British teaching material. Although I've invariably been supported in my research and teaching at inlogov, in thirty years John Martin is the first to experiment with my various ways of making sense - or trying to make sense - of political-management relations, more than my equal in passing on what he's learned to practitioners, because so good at gaining rapport with his audience. I can get so involved in ideas, I overlook the truth that they can never come to practical life if not enthusiastically communicated to the people who might find them valuable.

Writing - a link that goes to writing on Google.docs

Thinking + illustrations one and two - links that go to

transcripts and films of political-management conversations

Tomorrow we fly on to Darwin for the second of our joint seminars. Today it was really nice - in a fine teaching room at Belmont Council Offices - to click on the thumbnail of a video from an Australian political management pair - Mayor and Chief Executive from Wyndham - and to show and discuss it with seminar participants, among them quite a few chief executives, one with his Mayor. After that, extracts from other videos - Marion and Toodyay - which John has made with help from Annie Guthrie, his partner, were slipped into our programme to compare with the films I'd bought from UK. The process was smooth - reward for much joint planning with John, via email and skype, before getting to Australia, followed by rehearsal and planning in our lodgings. I feel pleasantly exhausted with time to phone Lin, my mother and the office where I joked with Sue and asked her to pass on thanks to everyone who'd helped with the Japan local government course.

We deserve to share these smiles

Dear Dhiaa. I've been in Australia for four days. When I was in Singapore for an hour on the way I went into the prayer room at the airport and they were kind enough to allow me to sit there. I made a prayer there for your safety and your family's when you return to your dear but troubled country for your Phd research. Our first seminar has just finished. It has been successful. It was strange flying over Iraq at 11000 metres the other night (see image on my airline seat screen). Kindest regards. Simon

Dear Simon. Great news indeed. Thank you for letting me know how things are going with you. I loved very much your idea of getting into the prayer room and praying to our safety. I thank you heartily and I am sure that your prayers will be accepted because they come from a loving, sincere heart. I pray that next time we both not just fly over Iraq but land there and have a wonderful time touring around different places and getting you introduced to a place you always wanted to see. Please, take care. My prayers and best wishes that your trip my be rounded safely and successfuly. Best Regards. Dhiaa

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From Mari Takano

Dear Simon. How are you in beautiful Australia? We, Japanese trainees, are now trying hard preparing for our own next visit(s) and still spending nice time in Lucas House. Please don't worry. On the coming Thursday we're going to leave here for new destinations with splendid memories of Birmingham and this university. We really appreciate you, Fay, two Chrises(!) and other kind teachers/staff for giving us unforgettable, valuable days. And you really cared about us very much, so we could always enjoy our university life and learn a lot of things. Your lectures and talking will surely help us not only on our next visits but also in our lives in Japan. Thank you very very much!!! (And I also thank your daughter. who gave me really helpful documents!) ... Please don't forget us. Mari

In Perth

Stayed overnight in Bendigo, drove back to Melbourne and flew to Perth, and took a taxi to our hotel apartment - overlooking the Swan River - where we could refine the detail of our first programme tomorrow; selecting short clips that will be instantly ready to illustrate debate. John and I view a filmed conversation and make a selection. I clip that bit out of the longer film so it can be placed on my desktop with the other clips.

First thing this morning John and I hired bicycles from reception and did a 20k circuit of Swan Reach under grey skies as the city high rises drifted across the near horizon. We were ignored by pelicans and cormorants as we passed sharing space with other cyclists, strollers and joggers. In a café in town we discussed transport politics over eggs benedict, melon juice and coffee cycling back to our apartment by 1100 to continue work. I caught Lin on skype for a couple of minutes - staying up late as usual. From the quiet of our room we are in immediate contact with the rest of the world. My sense of time and place is especially fluid.

One of John's filmed 'conversations'. Mayor and CEO of Marion

We've worked on through the day, John liaising with some of those whose films we'll be showing, getting a grand view of sunset over Perth. It is hard to express my enjoyment at having, in John, someone who shares my fascination with what goes on in the fuzzy messy grey area where politics and administration overlap in the making of government. My self-confidence on this subject has always been fragile - because the subject is so intangible and my approach more descriptive than prescriptive depending deeply on the engagement of those I presume to teach.

John confirms permission to use a film from Toodyay

We've done as much preparation as possible. Now to get a night's rest - and start on my next police procedural - This Night's Foul Work by Fred Vargas - before sleep overtakes me.