“Ok, guys. Time's up. Post-its in. Let me see. Smelly things! Smellular phones. We'll pass over that one. Petra, you'd like to see sponsored blimps in war zones. Cool. *Thinking is the box* Sounds like we've got Charles Manson with us today. Freaky deaky. Very 'Movement of the Free Spirit'. Ja, I did that in second year and frankly that's where it belongs. Back to the real world, guys. Show of professionalism. Then we break for lunch, ja?"

April, 1948

Dear Val,

How does the spring find you, dear? Yesterday we arrived at Lake Balaton, to clear minds and rekindle war-torn spirits. There really is nothing like the water. A lake listens as much as it speaks, under pale and early rays. Seated on one of the unpainted piers, when the swimmers have all gone home, one senses the effortless rhythm of the Lord's work. The lake stretches out like His palm, to accept our thanks, our pandemonium. Anyway, a week at the lake seems to send me pecking through daily doings that much keener. I think Fry is worried about me. In no uncertain terms, he insisted on leave.

But, the news is this - Type K was more than the peach schnapps talking. Two weeks ago we were given the keys to what proved to be a well-fitted kitchen and test area, approved as stable by the Russians, somewhat hastily, and quarantined since VE Day.  

Type K is an insolent bugger, a variant of Type HN7. (Last autumn, you will recall, we threw our hands up into the air and swore that HN7 had us snookered.) When they tightened the kitchen door things were fated to blow up, not be unravelled and boiled like twice-brewed tea.

You know how much I detest inactivity. Even at the lake I find myself digesting one of the Type K cook books, and ploughing through a sheaf of testing documents. There is no escape, Val. Here is a somewhat moving extract from one the test scenarios: 

"October 1944. Conclusions in the Case Study on the chimpanzee No. 107, Chaim.

Chaim is a happy, thoughtful chimp. His natural deportment is towards generosity and caring for the other chimps. In the summer intelligence exercises he scored a B-, but seems open to training, suggesting that guided application towards the more abstract tasks is all that is holding him back from achieving a full score. 

3^rd October. Notes on Primary Conditioning.

At 11:32 am, Chaim was exposed by inhalation. Type K, using a standard mask. Dosage: 1% per pint of natural air. Elapsed term: ten minutes

Stress levels

We observed twitching above standard levels during conditioning. Minute four: openly fighting his conditioning. General passivity post conditioning. 

Physical reading

Heavy blinking caused by eye dryness, eyes roving left and right, trembling in the hind quarters. We observed licking of lips and excessive thirst. Post conditioning: a new appreciation for caffeinated teas and coffees. No skin or observable organ changes.

Cardiac reading

Nil change pre/post conditioning. 

Blood toxicity reading

Rapid sugar level decrease, extending into post conditioning.

Mental faculties reading

Chaim's painting style has altered. He now seems eager to sketch straighter lines, and to depict logical shapes. This seems to result in some amount of frustration and self-criticism. He will quickly abandon a line and is keen to start afresh. 

Deportment

Immediate loss of interest in other chimps. Lack of reaction to minor or acute stress situations directly applied to fellows. Three days post conditioning: a greater sense of human mimicry. Five days post conditioning: disengaging totally from group activities.

10^th October. Notes on Secondary Conditioning.

At 11:15 am, Chaim was exposed by inhalation to a second dose of Type K. Dosage: 1% per pint of natural air. Elapsed term: ten minutes 

[Where a reading is not translated, consider it unaltered, Val]

Physical reading

Observed strong thirst. Chaim smashed a four piece coffee set with his fist after a few mouthfuls of coffee. Other dietary changes: general appetite decrease or wild fluctuation. 

Mental faculties

Chaim has abandoned all interest in painting but relates only to the construction bricks. Unguided, he will lay the bricks into rows, and at times appears to be making them consecutive, beginning with the biggest brick and decreasing in size.

Deportment

Two days post conditioning: Chaim was caught fighting with other chimps. Staff remove him from the garden after thumping a younger chimp. Sexual touching of staff.

17^th October. Notes on Third Conditioning. Double dosage.

At 11:23 am, Chaim was exposed by inhalation to a third dose of Type K. Dosage: 2% per pint of air. Elapsed term: ten minutes

Stress levels

During conditioning: none noted. Three days post conditioning: Nightly self-flagellation and howling. 

Physical reading

None noted, generally accepting of the increased dosage. Playfulness and sense of contentment.

Four days post conditioning: Death. 

Mental faculties reading

One day post conditioning: We observed that Chaim had a new interest in curves, forming the construction bricks in the shape of a face, with discernable eyes and mouth, and of sitting within its outline. Two days post conditioning: aggressive to staff, Chaim is no longer engaging in measurable creative activity. Behavioural vigilance. Food has been supplied beyond his reach, being beyond the facial boundary.

Deportment

One day post conditioning: aggressive towards any staff and chimps that approach the facial boundary. Two days post conditioning: refusal to sleep, refusing food. Average head banging. Three days post conditioning: flagellation. We observed high stress symptoms and general madness. Four days post conditioning: Catatonia, recline. Prolonged observation of the sky. 

22^nd October. Blood Analysis on Post Mortem, the chimpanzee No. 107, Chaim.

Cause of death: cardiac arrest, 21^st October, 1944. 5:28 pm. 

--

Prolonged observation of the sky, Val. I can relate to the old boy, tucked under this rug, here at the lake's edge. I can't wait to get back to work. I envy you the bright lights of Piccadilly.

As ever, the more time I spend correcting the ruptured mess mankind leaves in his course, the more I appreciate your patient hanging on there in London, and the more I realise what you both mean to me. I love you more than words might express. My apologies, I am turning emotional. If Type K had been taken forward, the search for wondermen could have left a blackened Eden where the wind breeds evil, and no witnesses.

Things are getting better, Val. I have faith, tough as ship's rope, that we are done with fascismo and, if it be His way, that Fritha will inherit the best of worlds, not the worst. And that Professor and Mrs Parish will one day sit in the sunset they deserve, shadowed all about by the 'inglorious arts of peace'.

Very truly yours,

Miles

About fifty people sit in a circle. At the centre, a plain table with flowers. As the service begins, a veil of pure silence descends, something which will last for an hour. Some people do hold a bible. One woman prefers to lie on a mat. Most close their eyes; some stare at the flowers or through the window. Communal contemplation can be broken, if an attendee feels compelled to stand and ‘minister’ what the silence is telling them to.

You go through an hour of pure silence in stages. Sweeping away the peripherals - the journey here, watching others, self-consciousness. Thoughts about your own faithlessness. Wondering why you came. Teen stabbings. Time. The Participatory Anthropic Principal.

Then you are thinking about the past week. Projects. Friends and colleagues. Problems and triumphs. Words that won’t leave your head. You drift off and you wake up, although you have not been asleep. Like the pause of semi-consciousness before sleep, but more spread out. Look at the trees. The Participatory Anthropic Principal. ‘Observers are necessary to bring the universe into being’. An aspiration to verify this using cosmology and quantum. The complexity of conscious life is just too improbable to even have been a happy accident. Conscious observation is that which collapses the universe’s waves and probabilities from superposition into the function we call reality. The great soup of the universe had to bring humanity, or other information-gathering systems, into being. 500 years after Copernicus told us we weren’t the centre of the universe, pure probability is suggesting - sure, but we are something.

You’ve drifted again. Breathing. A bird circles past the window. Honesty versus memory. The next stage feels like the polar opposite of paranoia. Pure acceptance of the assembled others. A kind of Buddhist detachment, they disappear from your needs, from any validation of self. The pleasure of mutual solitude, where we exist in spectral pods of worship, and only the pods touch and never the desires, never the self-image, the investment, the insult, never the knife. 

Again you wake up, although you have not been asleep. The future fills your thoughts, pulling you into the communal meta-slumber. You ask the great soup for strength, or failing that a great week. The hour passes quickly.

Someone stands. They feel that Quakers are more relevant today than any time in their history.  Presently, you shake hands with those around you, and the service is through. The meditative woman on the floor rolls up her mat. A friendly clerk, beard and Hush Puppies, thanks everyone. He introduces a Quaker all the way from Canberra, and a gay couple are also visiting. There is a collection to assist the collapsed legal system in Rwanda, meaning war victims still fail to find any justice. Amnesty International, Greenpeace, OXFAM, Peace Action and WILPF all had Quaker origins. You can stay for coffee and biscuits, but some just choose to go.

Broody after meeting the beautiful Aden Esler, who is seventeen weeks, pure-smelling and a kind of calm but bonny Hiberno-Brazilian. There’s nothing worse than fifty bibs and no rattle so, as gift, mum asked me to stock up the library. Obviously not for now, the child can barely tell a circle from a square, but for the future. Yesterday was a Granny Magnet book gather, which was not as easy as I imagined. First instinct was to purchase things I enjoyed myself but I recall no Alice, Narnia, Potter or Seuss, more the weighty Children’s Illustrated Bible, Br’er Rabbit, Aesop’s Fables, and of being read ‘Treasure Island’ thinking that Ben Gunn, marooned so long he was half insane, should have his own story.

On Charing Cross Road I found a host of nauseating things, ‘Bob Says Poop Is Cool’, cuddly snot trolls, probably fine-tuned by Freudians to ensure children don’t feel shame about their functions. ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ proved a hard find in hardback, as did books in Portuguese. A disappointment that so many central characters are male. I don’t need subliminals designed to breed the ballsiest broad in the boardroom, some kind of personality spannering, just being female and explorative would be enough. Even ‘Mother Goose’ began to feel a bit gender-specific after a while. Why not ‘Parent Goose’? And so it was, so far I have:

Miffy Touch and Feel (Dick Bruna) Miffy gets textural. Rubbable accoutrements, plot and character dev-free.

Calm Down, Boris (Sam Lloyd) Not a ribald lampoon of London local government, Boris is a worrying furball and a hand puppet, who pops through a bookhole shouting ‘Kissy kissy’ (maybe there is some element of satire). The other monsters don’t like his hairy kisses (hirsutism) but he kisses a horrible dog and it runs away. Cool dénouement, if a little gross.

Elmer and the Lost Teddy (David McKee) Plot-wise very much the Quest, as Elmer the Patchwork Elephant tries to locate Baby Elephant’s teddy, deep in the jungle. Set over the course of one day, this is Elmer’s ‘Ulysses’, and what he really finds is himself. “You don’t have to be different to be special,” he concludes. Warning: contains mild peril.

My First Oxford Book Of Poems Everything post-nursery rhyme, so long as it's short, fresh and simple. Spike Milligan to Shakespeare, Belloc to Christina Rossetti. Nice.

The Lonesome Puppy (Yoshimoto Nara) Like Boris, a book where the central character feels too big to be loved, and longs to be smaller and cuter. A first book from cult painter Nara, whose work always has a look of subverted innocence. Starting to wonder if it's too 'dark'. As in: you get flowers and someone always comments, "But they're funeral flowers" or "You can't bring hospital flowers to a christening. You're weird." or "Lupins? What, is your girlfriend a Victorian homosexual or something?" implying there's a floral rulebook everyone follows but you're doomed to screw up on.

Who Will Comfort Toffle? (Tove Jansson) Wikipedia tells me that, as a child, Jansson lost a philosophical quarrel about Immanuel Kant with one of her brothers (don’t we all) then drew the ugliest creature imaginable, calling it ‘Kant’. This was the prototype Moomin, and ‘Vem ska trösta Knyttet?’ was the second Moominland picture book. The illustrations are lovingly wrought, like muted psychedelic woodcuts. Another dark classic, as Pete-Doherty-fingerpuppet Toffle tries to fit in, and loses himself deep in the imaginationscape. Wonderous.

Not tired of the written word, a post-blog ponders its five year plan. Fiction is the goal but the problem is not procrastination. It’s not work I’m shirking. Process modelling. Impact analysis. All I do is work, and sleep. Writing happens. I comment. News sites. Sturdier blogs. I have been commenting on .. the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill re: NI. “Can I just dismiss the quantitative analysis of 'majorities'? A fraction of the public votes, a fraction of the voters honestly believe in who and what they are voting for, and (especially in a place in NI) this subdivision of a subdivision vote based on a single dividing issue, leaving abortion as some randomly prescribed assumption by four or five aged, male party heads. Even if that wasn't the case, if a tiny minority of women wanted a service that is perfectly legal in the rest of the UK, why shouldn't they have it? This is about geography (and about cock-eyed moral relativism - "Oo things are different over there." No. They. Aren't.)” This led to petitioning emails. Lady Sylvia Hermon realised that there is a debate to be had. Jeremy Corbyn agreed wholeheartedly, while Kate Hoey was OOO. Politics feels low impact, a maze of compromised tiers. Like an arcade penny waterfall, you can thrust your tuppence in with passion, only to be another limp click on the lowest deck. Sometimes I feel like a marginal, an outsider worthy of hate and seeking it. A scourge, a provocateur. The Lee Harvey Oswald type. A no-goodnik. But that is not politics. Perhaps little exists to connect my heart to our ideology, the direction the world is taking. In a few years the UK will almost certainly have a conservative government glorying in 'getting tough' and closing possibilities, while America could have a progressive, black anti-war president. I know where I’d rather be. I comment.. “Sir Keith Park - fascinating figure but a move as progressive as - I dunno - Vienna? London on par with Vienna. Dutiful. Honouring. But that is it.” Would Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park approve of Boris’s move for Trafalgar Square to house his Battle of Britain memorial, instead of a succession of new art? Were yesterday’s heroes twenty-eight going on sixty? "Take that, Nazi! But dogfights aren't what they used to be. Not on your Nellie Duff. Bring back the Sopwith! Ah, the Sopwith, now there was a pla-- aaarrgh.." I think I’ll gum up totally. I won’t need a mouth any more. My parents were big talkers. I started a series of pen and ink drawings called “Things That Made My Mother Swear” and #1 was ‘Dirty Protesters’. The series kind of ended there. If you examined what might make her swear the barks of hairy bombers in a room caked with stools must come close to ticking every box. Twice. Artistically, I shot my bolt with that one. But two sides to every politic. No, more. "Scotland is closer to independence than Ireland is to unification. What does this tell us about militarising a disagreement? No British Army on the streets of Edinburgh. No H-Blocks in Aberdeen. No body searches in Dundee bakeries. Just the courting the popular consensus." I comment.. on war. "Jemima?" My late grandmother’s first memory was of a tall, bearded man wearing a kilt, coming down the garden path towards her. “I’m your brother. I’m back from the Boer war.” She became a Wren, while her husband helped smuggle Irishmen over the border and into the British Army (not everyone was neutral). My dad was in the Security Forces. Maybe I’m the first generation with no war, secretly guilty. A Lee Harvey Masquerade. I comment on.. atheism. Once you admit to atheism it suddenly becomes hard to comment on many other things. Religious and pseudo-religious terror, religious involvement in politics, the Middle East - your view is handed to you - these people are misguided, and need to stop putting lineage above faith, and faith above anything at all. The end. “Atheism/agnosticism is the oldest tradition .. stretches back to the playful plankton, before self-fascination, before roles and hierarchies, before we were sold to the war machine..” I have commented on the online music industry and the Eurovision Song Contest, an event I would like to enter. I have commented after drinking too often, and sought provocation, I believe through a sense of isolation. Is this at an end? No comment.

Over le plat pays to Ghent (in the style of 2 Many DJ’s). Working nine to five I’m a human fly There are nine million bicycles in Ghent. They are often filling the streets, which are web-like and random enough as it is. “Pardon, monsieur, j’ai besoin du Smak. Ou est le Smak?” Direction-seeking, aided by the international hand signal for ‘contemporary art sans boundaries’ (you know the one). In Flanders the kids get taller and blonder, Walloon is dropped in favour of Stateside English, super-relaxed. “Shure thing, guysh.” In the enormous Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Guillaume Bijl does a disconcerting thing. He moves our real world into the gallery, letting us wander around a deserted tourist information office, a marriage bureau, an army recruitment centre, and so on. You read the (real) billboards, sit in the cinema (‘Deep Impact’), and in the judge's chair for the ‘Miss Flanders Beauty Contest’ (an empty stage - as commentary on his countrywomen this is harsh), before dancing on your tod at the VIP disco. Upstairs the ‘real world’ just gets weirder, with a series of invented museums: the Museum of Lederhosen, the Museum of Bidets (“Oh wow, Maria Callas.”) and a Museum of Polling Booths (examples from around the globe). There is faked footage of James Ensor looking lost in Ostend, and some Flemish plays to hand-shadow across. Finally, Cuban artist Wilfredo Pieto’s ‘Mountain’ is a room-sized bar chart sculpting the rise in Opec oil prices, sharp as a skate park ramp, over the past generation. Kickflippin'.

Downtown Ghent is a maze of mixed gothic houses and shipping offices rising over sparkling canals, beneath three handsome spires (Saint Bavo’s boasts the ‘Adoration of the Mystic Lamb’ by Van Eyck as altarpiece) while 100,000 students demand bars, record shops, electro-indie mash-ups and snacks. The Heuvelpoort area comes up a likeable trumps. The city is spiritual home of Waterzooi, a refreshing cream stew with mixed fishes, and to Gravensteen (even the name is a choke from the gutter), built in 1180 by the crusading Philip of Alsace and incorporating a soul-shitting spookshack of hardcore torture hardware. Nice one, Phil. Speculoos ice cream comes with waffles.

Back in Brussels, Audry has left a Happy Birthday fruit bowl in the Junior Suite. Touched, I buy her a bottle of Black Bush, and leave it with the concierge. Feeling spoiled but quietened at times, by things we avoid splicing into words. Mortality, finitude, the spiritual. Sad stuff we keep for the potting shed, for we know that expression is No Good. Sparkle and the sun and something to taste is all. What else? In other news, MissX has moved to London and a glowing international research job. In the first three months, she’ll have been to Moscow, Barcelona, Berlin, Moscow again, Hamburg, Saint Petersburg and Novosibirsk. Emerging markets, a far cry from Donetsk orphanages (who'd probably au contraire definitions of soullessness). It's all the pure language of music, if we could but listen.