100TWC - Day 9: Death

Of all the things Not Spoken Of In Polite Company - I'm sure you can think of your own list - death will probably come at or close to the top of most people's. It's often been remarked that, despite it being one of the only certainties in life, one of the few things that everyone will experience, it's also one of the least discussed. And, in most cases, one of the least prepared for.

At least 50% of people die without making a will. They leave it up to the laws of whichever country they die in, to decide how to distribute their worldly goods when they're gone. True, there are those who may think they don't have a lot to leave, but at a time when home ownership - and the value of those homes - remains high, it's not unusual even for ordinary people to leave at least one item worth around a quarter of a million pounds. I don't know about you, but I don't want incompetent jobsworths in whatever government department deals with inheritance to decide on my behalf where that kind of money goes. It's even more complicated for those who don't have children, or for those who have more than one and one or more of them don't get on. Why would anyone want to saddle their offspring or near relatives with potentially years of bitter feuding, arguing and recrimination, for the sake of not taking an hour out to write down a simple will?

I guess it's looked upon as one of those things you'll get around to at some stage. But death doesn't always wait on your convenience. It doesn't sit there waiting for you to sign on the bottom line before swinging its scythe of doom. Without wanting to sound morbid (and there I go, veering off in the direction of the apology for even daring to consider it), death can come at any time. It'll surprise you. We don't all get to enjoy the "luxury" of a ripe old age, dying in our own beds surrounded by family and friends.

The various manners and means of alternative death (by which I mean the alternatives to that "ideal" death referred to above) are each in their own right awkward to even think about let alone talk about. Death through short- or long-term illness (cancer, heart disease, lung disease) is familiar to everyone, and a fairly high proportion of people will also know someone (or know someone who knows someone) who has died through sudden means of one sort or another. A fall, a car accident, or drowning for instance. And yet the single most often uttered comment, when faced with another's grief is: "I just didn't know what to say."

If death itself is rarely spoken of, its companion topic - Life After Death - is an even more unwelcome subject for polite after-dinner conversation. We generally steer clear of this. Perhaps because we think it's a foregone conclusion that it either does, or does not, exist, or through imagined embarrassment at admitting to either of those views. True, some people hold their view so closely to their hearts that no debate is possible, and any attempt is met with frosty disdain or heated argument, either of which is more than enough excuse to avoid the subject altogether. There are some opinions, it seems, that it is uncomfortable to air in the aforementioned polite company.

Which probably explains why those with strongly held beliefs tend to seek out like-minded individuals and even invent societies, closed clubs, cliques and organisations, along with their attendant rules, regulations and rituals. Some of these are so successful that they "enjoy" over a billion members and find themselves among the richest organisations the world has ever seen. But even then death is rarely discussed until it happens.

Another unwanted side effect of discussing the afterlife is ridicule. Even a slight misjudgement of audience on those rare occasions where one might feel moved to - for example - explain that one has proof of life after death will be met with ridicule more often than with interest, in a proportion of roughly 20 to 1. Little wonder the subject is avoided most of the time. Ridicule is, of course, often a smoke screen for embarrassment on the part of those doing the ridiculing. Are they embarrassed by their own beliefs - or lack of them? Or simply embarrassed to be associated with, or even listen to, someone who holds such beliefs. Does believing in life after death make you "other?" Or does the line become stepped over only when you decide to voice your beliefs. Or, indeed, write about them? Are such things so personal, so intimate, that they fall into the category of things that it is forbidden to speak of, along with what kind of sex you had last night and how often, or whether you secretly enjoy listening to Jimmy Carr.

Commercial-Time

I've been trying to work out why I found the adverts on Canadian TV so intrusive and irritating. Canadian Broadcasting limits advertising to 15 mins per hour on commercial channels, but "only" 12 minutes per hour on "Specialty" channels. However those numbers apply to real commercials - i.e. those advertising product. From my admittedly brief exposure, it doesn't cover trailers. And it doesn't excuse the extremely annoying habit - something we don't have in the UK - of running the same ad twice in the same break - sometimes only 30 seconds apart - or running very similar ads, such as hair care products for two different types of hair, which have almost identical wording, serially. The worst we ever get is a repeat of the last few seconds of an ad - these agency types have learned their lessons about the way memory works - to "fix" the product in viewers' minds, but these almost always run at the end of the ad break, separated from the original by up to three or four minutes.

One evening I finally managed to watch a movie from beginning to end. Aliens. It was scheduled to air over three hours, which given its posted running time on IMDb of 137 mins leaves 43 mins for ads - 14.33 per hour. But they're not evenly split. The first hour felt almost like UK television. The first break didn't come until 20 past the hour, and the next was twenty minutes later, each one showing only 3-4 minutes of ads. I should have been wise. As the film continued, the frequency of breaks increased, to the point where the last half-hour of the film suffered three breaks of five minutes each.

I have no idea how the law constrains the incidence of ads. My Aliens experience would suggest that rather than being a rigid per-hour limit, that "15 minutes per hour" is an average. Being allowed to relax the grip of ads in some hours only to tighten it fiercely later, destroys any enjoyment.

I used to think I'd be able to live in Canada. That I'd actually quite enjoy it. But if I ever had to, I don't think I'd be watching any live TV. I'd be PVR-ing everything and spending a lot of time with my finger on the FF button!!

Team work and The Wire

BBC Two recently (beginning of last week) began showing HBO's The Wire in its entirety, starting at season one, in a graveyard slot on weekday nights. 11.20pm to be precise.

Having heard a lot about this show in one way or another (from colleagues on TV Scoop, various Internet forums and reviews, and fanboy family members *vbg*) I was keen to see what all the fuss was about, but 11.20?? Old farts like me have usually been in bed an hour by then. So we did the only thing possible: set a weekday schedule on the PVR and sat back while the episodes were sucked in.

I tried to approach the show with no preconceptions, despite my natural inclination to dislike anything that "everyone else" likes. This is not to disrespect anyone's opinion, it's just that in my experience entertainment surrounded by steaming piles of hype usually resembles steaming piles of something else when you eventually get to see it. I should have detected a subtle difference in the hype associated with The Wire: it's generated by the people who actually watched the show, rather than the people who made it and WANT you to watch it so they can make more money.

Anyway, we caught the first five episodes back-to-back last weekend, and the first two of this week's last night. Seven hours in and we're enjoying it immensely. So far I wouldn't be as fulsome as many have been with my praise - I wouldn't say I'm 'hooked' or that it's 'the best TV show ever, bar none' etc - but hey, it's still only the first season, and still only the first seven eps. It's certainly different, credible, realistic, interesting, involving and dramatic.

But this isn't strictly a post about The Wire (although so far it's doing a good impersonation of one, lol). It's about something that occurred to me while I was watching the show last night. There's a character in the cops' team called Prez. Roland Pryzbylewski, actually, which explains why they call him Prez. He's well known in the police department for being totally incompetent and inept. Despite being bounced around several units he never fits in anywhere, and he only ends up on the "wire" team because the Deputy Commissioner tells all his people to dump their useless jerks there.

But slowly, working in the team's basement office, something happens. Prez finds his niche and turns into the team's code-breaker, first with the gang's pager codes and later with other complex number and letter combinations. He makes a major contribution to the case.

This is classic team work. A team - a good team that is - comprises a group of people whose skills are complementary. A leader. An ideas man. Someone who pays attention to the details and doesn't miss the finer points. Someone who energises the whole team with enthusiasm. A problem solver. And so on. Occasionally, people perform more than one role, but all roles are essential and the team flies best when they're all done well.

But here's the thing. Each one, on their own, can't cut it. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And that's why Prez is such a good example. Outside of the team he's a jerk. A square wheel. But he's like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle left out of the box. Once you slot him into place, the whole thing looks right.

And it came to me, finally, that this is why I used to love my job, and why I hate it now. I used to be part of - and ENJOY being part of - a team. We could fly. We could do anything. And we did. But now there are no teams; there are only individuals. Everyone is expected to do their own thing. To be able to pick up any piece of work and do it just as effectively as any other piece of work. I mean, it's all technical stuff, right? That's how the managers look at it. We're technical people, doing technical work, so we're all just as good at any of it as anyone else. Which, as I hope you can appreciate, is a crock of shit.

There is no teamwork any more, and it sucks.

The instant wind-up

I may have mentioned before how easily I lose patience with my mother. It's always been this way, as long as I can remember. Whether walking deliberately across my train set, accusing me of taking her address stamp, or mis-remembering past conversations, this aspect of our relationship has a long history and has remained constant for as long as I can remember. She can make me blow my top with a single sentence. Which for someone as normally even-tempered as myself, is even more annoying and frustrating than if I were the sort of person who regularly "goes off on one."

So I was grateful for the slowly falling snowflakes yesterday morning as we rose early and drank our morning coffee while staring out into the garden and wondering whether it was worth striking up a conversation with someone who can't remember what we've said from one minute to the next. Because those flakes gave us a ready-made excuse to beat a hasty retreat. "Don't want to risk getting stuck on the tops," I said, knowing that we wouldn't be taking the high road home in any case and that the risk of encountering any snow was minute. "We'd better get going."

It's still hard for me to bite my tongue when faced with the kind of provocation we encountered this weekend. It would *almost* be worth the two-hour drive home at midnight after the Chinese to avoid it. But then, there's the element of "duty." More on that another time, maybe. For today, it was tongue-biting, and leaving as quickly as possible, before it became unbearable. The path of least resistance, I think they call it.

Dynamic Thinker

Why do I always wake up on Saturday at exactly the same time as I wake up on a weekday, even though the alarm is not on? Just for once I'd love to be able to lie in like I did when I was a kid. Luxuriate in the comfort and relaxation instead of having to be up and at 'em.

All good blogging things come via Diane, so here's a quickfire personality test based on the work of Jung. They promise it only takes five minutes, but I pondered the answers for a little bit longer. Still less than 10 minutes though, and interesting questions. It makes me out to be a Dynamic Thinker, which from the description at the end of that link is pretty much spot on. There's a link on that page for you to take your own test, should you wish.

Gifted

I was watching Channel 4's "Child Genius" tonight. A rather sad look at the lives of children with extremely high IQs - as in, the maximum score possible: 170. I'm not going to go into the details of the programme, but one aspect of it sticks in my mind. One of the super-bright kids' brother was being tested for the first time and the family waited with bated breath to see how he would do.

His result was 137. "Oh, good for him," his exceedingly intelligent elder brother scoffed, "he's quite bright." Difficult to know how he could possibly have invested that simple sentence with more disdain, tinged with relief that his brother hadn't bettered him (which, being "exceedingly intelligent" he should already have worked out was impossible given he already had a perfect score).

But I digress. My point is, the announcer declared 137 put the brother within the definition of "gifted." Who knew? When I was 12 my IQ was measured at 144. Hey - I'm gifted! Was I sent to a special school? Was I tutored at home? Did my parents fuss around me and make sure I had access to all sorts of mind-stretching and creative endeavour? The answer, as you may have guessed, is no. I just got on with it, like everyone else I knew.

Which, for me, begs two questions. One: how would life had panned out if I'd had more pushy (or maybe, more aware) parents, prepared to treat me differently on account of me being... different? (And from where I sit now, the answer to that - at least one potential answer - is very scary. I'm glad I grew up with something-approaching-normal socialisation, friends, mistakes, challenges and triumphs).

Two: how many more "gifted" children slip through the net, and end up not fulfilling their potential, simply because their parents never conceive of them being gifted, and their teachers are too hard-pressed to notice? That, perhaps, is the most scary thought of all.

Pick one that looks like you

I've mentioned before in the context of things going publicly wrong the importance of following procedure, and the difficulties that arise when trying to persuade people (in general, but unskilled workers in particular) of the importance of following procedure even in the face of compelling forces operating in directions opposite to those recommended.

I was reminded of this today on hearing a news bulletin about the issue of security passes to airport workers in the US. Following 9-11 security procedures were drastically tightened and steps put in place to perform detailed background checks on anyone applying to work in areas where the safety and security of airline passengers could be compromised. You might ask why such procedures were not in place before 9-11, but (a) I don't have an answer to that and (b) if I did it would probably be too long to type in here, so I'll concentrate on the topic at hand.

The trouble is, these procedures are designed by people who have never run an airport, or tried to recruit anyone, or even tried to follow the procedures they themselves have written. When you're a low-paid supervisor, and your manager asks you why the shift hasn't been filled, it won't cut any ice to say "because I'm waiting for the background checks to be done on these five candidates."

So I wasn't surprised (although more than a little disturbed) to hear that new recruits to the ground staff at Chicago's O'Hare airport are shown a box full of old security passes belonging to previous employees and told "pick one that looks like you."

I've seen the sign!

The petrol station was busy when I filled up today and I was sat in the queue for quite a while twiddling my thumbs and gazing aimlessly about like you do. People watching. And reading every sign and billboard in view.

Eventually I spotted a sign on the pillar between pumps:

"Don't Commit Crime!"

And in smaller letters underneath, something about how all petrol must be paid for.

So I thought sure, that makes sense. Here's a guy who pulls up at the pump, intending to fill his car and then do a runner. He's a petrol thief. He's maybe not even bothered that his number is on the CCTV because it's a stolen car. He starts to fill up and then he spots the sign.

"Don't Commit Crime!"

And he thinks "Oh, my God! You're right! I mustn't do this! It's wrong!" And he totally changes his mind, finishes filling the car, and walks over to the kiosk to do his civic and legal duty and pay for his petrol.

And on his way over to the kiosk, he notices a flock of pigs flying by at about two thousand feet.

Bob's not your uncle

Our cat Mimi, who we "inherited" with the house, has been exhibiting a grossly enhanced appetite of late. Since she's an "outdoor" cat I immediately suspected a worm infestation, and bought some worm treatments from the supermarket. Bob Martin's to be precise. Two varieties: some stuff for tapeworms that you squirt on the back of the cat's neck (don't ask me how that works - you're the one on the Internet) and a separate and more traditional treatment for roundworm - granules to mix with the food.

I've had cats for over thirty years and I've never had much success with the "mix with the food" variety. Companies that make this stuff never learn. Cats have a much more sensitive sense of smell than we do. You sprinkle these grey granules over the food, mix it well in, cat walks up, takes one sniff and steps back smartly as if to say "I'm not going anywhere near THAT!", turns round and walks away.

In my experience it matters not how long you leave the stuff down, the animal would rather starve than deign to eat any of it. However in our case, it's dried food, so it remains to be seen which of us has the stronger will...

Testing, testing

Have you ever worked with a tester?

I've done some unit (aka alpha) testing before, and I've defined the occasional test script, but I've never done the job in a mainstream way.

I attended our project kick-off meeting a few weeks back and following on from my presentation was a 15-minute slot for our test manager to describe the test strategy, environments, etc. He's an enthusiastic guy with a great deal of experience in testing. He's made a career of it. In fact one of the points he made during his presentation was that the people he'd be recruiting on to the test team would all be ISEB (I think he said) certified, and he was very proud that there was a testing career path defined now in his part of the organisation.

Listening to him speak about testing with a glint in his eye made me realise (yet again) how different people are. I could no more get excited about testing than fly to the moon by flapping my arms (even if the physics didn't prevent me, before you get all scientific and start going on about vacuums and such). But it's a good job someone can, because if we didn't have testers we wouldn't be able to deliver. It's back to the old arsehole scenario again. Some people are made for the job. Years ago I worked with a guy who looked on testing as a challenge. It was him against the developer and may the best man win. His goal? To break the system, any way he could. Fair means or foul. If there was a way in, he'd find it. Garbled inputs, unexpected fields in data, pulling out network cables mid-transaction, corrupt files on disk, malformed packets. You name it, he'd try it. And every time that system crashed, he'd chalk up another point on his side of the scoreboard.

But you know what? Even though he was just about the most hated person on the payroll as far as the developers were concerned, they had to admit a grudging respect for him. He was damned good at his job, and they had to raise their game to get their code drops past him and out to integration, which had a positive effect on the project overall.

Blades of rain

An unexpected day working at home today, owing to the fact that much of Sheffield, where I was supposed to be going, is underwater. Train services are suspended, the station was evacuated yesterday afternoon and several roads into the city are blocked with either water or abandoned cars, so I made the executive decision not to even attempt the trip.

When I arrived home from Bracknell last night at 10.30, Nikki had been watching News 24 most of the evening. Within 10 seconds of seeing the footage of the streaming rivers where the roads should be I said "I'm not going there!" Even though the floods aren't that close to where I would be going, they're not that far away either!

One of the buildings affected is quite close to the river and coincidentally the place I'd had to visit the week before last to have my photo taken for a new photo-ID pass.

"Just go along there," my contact in the security section told me, "and they'll sort you out."

So I did. Walked in on a group of building security guards doing what building security guards do best (sit around on their arses all day talking about the football, the woman in accounts, last night's telly and where they're going drinking tonight. Pretty much like all the other office workers then. Except most of the women don't talk about that woman in accounts. At least, not in the same way).

"Hello," I said breezily. "I've come to have my picture taken."
There was a sharp intake of breath and looks of consternation passed from man to man. There were shrugs.
"No-one told us you were coming."
"No, they told me I didn't need an appointment. Just turn up, and you'll look after me."
"Well, see, the thing is, I haven't got the camera with me here today."
I look forlorn.
"The only reason I've travelled to Sheffield today is so that you can take my photo."
The breath, taken in so sharply only moments before, is now blown out in resigned fashion.
"You'd better follow me then."

We leave the building. We walk to the next building, which is in fact less than 100 yards away. We enter that building, walk behind the security desk to a small room that contains a desk, a chair, and a filing cabinet. The filing cabinet is locked. Security man unlocks it, opens it, reaches in and retrieves...a digital camera! Aha! So the only reason you tried to put me off from having my photo taken today was so you could avoid taking a little exercise. "I haven't got the camera with me today." Right!

I was still chewing this over in my mind as I walked back through Sheffield centre to the other office, when I was spoken to by a traffic light. It took me by surprise at first.

"Take care! You in the red jacket! Look both ways!"

I was crossing the tram lines and approaching the roadway. I was indeed wearing my red anorak, so I knew the traffic light was addressing me. As if to confirm this, the light repeated its warning.

"Take care! You in the red jacket! Look both ways!"

Then I remembered reading that some cities were installing "talking" CCTV cameras to help with petty crime. So they could yell at scallies for dropping litter, that kind of thing. How cool, I thought, that they use it to make people aware of their road safety obligations too. I stood on the kerb, waiting for the traffic to clear so I could cross. Now that my mind wasn't full of how lazy the security guard had been, and I was right on top of the talking traffic light, I could hear its message properly the next time it issued forth.

"Take care! Two-way traffic! Look both ways!"

Any old iron?

When the plasterers arrived last week, we had the radiators removed so that we could get the best result. It's not really surprising that most people don't take radiators off when decorating, even though the end result is never as good as it can be when you have a clear run with brush, roller, or wallpaper. But what does surprise me is the number of times you see a room skimmed without removing the rads. This always ends up looking like crap.

So anyway, we're doing things properly and the radiators came off - even though in this case it was a traumatic process. Once they'd been removed, we started considering replacing them. The originals were old, overlarge and relatively inefficient compared with newer finned models. Once we'd investigated the cost of replacement it was a no-brainer.

We'd taken the rads down into the hall to get them out of the way of the plasterers but it was clear they couldn't stay there for long. Paul and I carried the larger of the two (it was about 2500mm long) out into the front garden and propped it under the dining room window. The smaller one fitted easily in the car and I took it to the tip along with the few bags of plastering rubble the guys had left behind. But the larger one was more of a problem. A problem I decided to defer for another day.

Returning home from work on Tuesday of last week, Nikki and I were puzzled to see a black mark on the front path. A smudge, several feet long, splashed right down the middle of the path, with smaller splashes on the bushes at either side. We were nonplussed; momentarily unable to work out what the mark could be. Paul had cleaned the path with our spiffy new power washer the week before, and the plasterers had left creamy boot prints all up and down the path, but this was something else; something entirely different.

Then my gaze moved to the dining room window. Something was missing. The radiator. Of course! The mark was dried-up radiator water, heavy with black iron oxide. Someone had come into the garden and "stolen" our large radiator! For a split second I was outraged at the theft. Then I came to my senses. We were throwing it out anyway. All the thief had done was solved my problem of how to get it to the tip. I was reminded of the tongue-in-cheek advice offered on a local bulletin board to someone who was finding it impossible to give away some unwanted furniture: Leave it on your front path with a sign saying "second-hand furniture for sale" and someone is bound to steal it!

Someone loves you

That's how my horoscope started this morning. "Someone loves you," it said. "They see right down to your deepest, murky bits and still want to hold your hand. So don't hurt them just because you don't like those murky bits yourself."

You always hurt the one you love, the old song used to go. The one you shouldn't hurt at all. When you live with someone with whom you feel able to be completely and utterly yourself, shorn of the glamour and glitz you put on for the outside world, it's easy to hurt them by omission, rather than by commission.

You may not think you put on any glamour for other people. You don't dress up, you don't fix your hair, or shine your shoes, or wear any bling or fragrance. So no obvious prettification, but when those other people greet you and ask how you are, you put on a smile and say "fine, thanks. You?" Maybe behind your smile all you want to do is ignore them. To not have to say anything, and especially not smile, because today is not a good day and you really can't be arsed.

So that's your glamour. You make more of an effort, even if you're not conscious of it.

But back home? Well, home is home. You can be yourself. You can slob around in your old trackie bottoms and the same T-shirt you've had on all week. You can avoid shaving for as long as possible. You can leave the lipstick off. And yet home is also the place where that someone lives. The someone who loves you. The someone who is quite possibly the only one who deserves your glamour.

That's what I mean by "hurting someone by omission." You reserve your glamour for the outside world and at home you do your own thing. Did you forget how special that someone is? No. But maybe, subconsciously, you trade on the fact that they want you to be comfortable being yourself and you translate that into: I don't have to make an effort.

So what's this about the deepest murky bits? They're the bits about yourself that you like to keep hidden, or about which you may not even be aware. If there are aspects of yourself that you don't like, then you must know about them. But there may also be parts of your character that aren't especially likeable, but are hidden from you.

In the 1950s, two researchers at the University of California devised the Johari window. By observing how subjects expressed their personalities they discovered that there are aspects of our personality that we're open about, and other elements that we keep to ourselves. There are also things that others see in us that we're not aware of. Combining these it's possible to draw up a four-box grid, which includes a fourth group of character traits that are unknown to anyone:

1. The public area ("Public Self") holds things that are openly known and talked about - and which may be seen as strengths or weaknesses. This is the self that we choose to share with others
2. The hidden area ("Blind Spots") contains things that others observe but which we are unaware of. Again, they could be positive or negative behaviours, and affect the way others act towards us
3. The unknown area ("Unconscious Self") is those things nobody knows about us - including ourselves. This may be because we've never exposed those areas of our personality, or because they're buried deep in the subconscious
4. The private area ("Hidden Self") covers aspects of our self that we know about and keep hidden from others.
   

Although the boxes are shown the same size, in reality they are unequal in content and indeed much therapy involves using regular and honest exchange of feedback, promoting a willingness to disclose personal feelings so that the Public Self is expanded and the other three areas made as small as possible. People will then come to understand what "makes you tick," and what you find easy or difficult to do. Knowing that about you, they are in an even stronger position to offer appropriate support.

Knowing the worst about you, whether you have chosen to hide it from most other people, or even from yourself, and yet still loving you because it's the whole you they love, is an extraordinary thing. And if some of those parts of you are things you don't like to think about, or talk about, or which make you unhappy, then the only correct response is for you to do something about them. Not spend the anger you feel at yourself, on those who are closest to you and deserve it the least.

Tubes of celestial joy

Reading my mate's blog about addiction got me thinking about smoking. As early as I can remember thinking about the subject at all, I have never been able to understand why anyone would do it. Surrounded as I was by two smoking parents, I have a bazillion memories of how disgusting it is to be around smoke. The air in our lounge was blue, every night, with the fallout from the countless ciggies my folks would puff their way through while watching TV. I often had to escape to the kitchen just to get a breath of air. These days I'd probably have a case against them for "assault by passive smoking" or something.

My Dad used to call cigarettes "tubes of celestial joy" but there was precious little joy in it as far as I could see. He woke up every morning hacking his lungs up, his fingers were stained dark yellow and he died of a lung disease. My Mum is now virtually housebound by chronic emphysema and has to take an inhaler every 2-3 hours to be able to breathe at all. They both smoked from a very early age - pre-teen, I mean.

She defends starting by saying "everyone" did it back then and no-one knew it would do you any harm. Fair comment perhaps but it doesn't explain why she carried on with it for so long, nor why anyone would choose to start now. I've always thought holding a fag, or having one hanging out of your mouth, looks faintly ridiculous, rather than in any way "cool" or macho.

With time, companies scared off by passive smoking lawsuits have gradually banned smoking from the workplace and this has slowly extended to shops and all forms of public transport with the result that there are few places now where I come into contact with it. As a result I'm even more intolerant of it when I do catch a whiff, simply because it is so rare. In the UK we'll soon enjoy a total ban in pubs and restaurants too, and it can't come soon enough for me.

As with many things we take for granted, if smoking were to be "invented" now, it would never be licenced. Imagine that. Leaving aside the balance of the tax revenue argument, there would be fewer deaths from heart disease, lung disease, cancer of all types, pulmonary embolism and stroke. Vast commercial empires that actually deal in death would either never have arisen, or would be diverted to more worthwhile causes. Thousands of hectares of land devoted to growing tobacco could be turned over to food production in areas that need it most.

In fact the more you think about it, the more abhorrent it seems that so many economies can get so badly twisted out of shape, all to feed mankind's addiction to this ... weed.

Turkey anyone?

If Bernard Mathews famous "bootiful" "Norfolk" turkey business survives this bird flu outbreak it will be more by luck than judgement. I put Norfolk in quotes because it's come out that a lot of his turkey meat is shipped in, partly processed, from Hungary. Not exactly a marketing department's wet dream that, is it?

A representative from Mathews' farms was on the radio last Friday defending the company. The outbreak was originally said to have been contained in one shed. Later it emerged that the H5N1 infection had spread to two other sheds. "Doesn't say much for your bio-security measures, does it?" John Humphrys of BBC Radio 4's Today programme asked.

Well John, as anyone who has worked in industry could tell you, what's written down in the process manual often bears absolutely no relation to what really happens. Processes rely on people, and people will do whatever seems expedient to give themselves an easy life, unless they are incentivised to behave differently. That incentive can be money, comfort, supervision, threat (of loss of earnings, face, or job), kudos, whatever, but there has to be one. It's no good for it to simply be written in a process manual.

If the process is that boots are scrubbed with disinfectant, and that chemical has to be lugged in 50-litre drums from a store on the other side of the compound, then one day, when the juice has run out, someone will think "hey, I can't be arsed to fetch another drum. One day without scrubbing my boots can't hurt." And they move from one shed to another with no scrubbing. And nothing awful happens - no-one even notices, and no-one fetches more juice. So there's no boot scrubbing the next day, and still nothing bad starts up. Pretty soon everyone is leaving their boots unscrubbed and nothing ever comes of it. If it goes on long enough, old workers might even start to say to new hands "oh, yeah, it says in the manual we're supposed to scrub our boots, but you don't need to bother with all that hassle. It's not necessary."

And then one day, H5N1 turns up and all hell breaks loose. If they had been scrubbing their boots like they should have, it would have been kept to a single shed, but instead it's all over the shop.

There's a famous piece of research often quoted on t'Interweb (usually in the context of managers' behaviour). It goes like this: You put eight monkeys in a cage, with a bunch of bananas suspended from a hook on the top of the cage. You place a ladder so that the monkeys can easily climb up to the bananas. Then every time any monkey tries to reach the bananas, you turn on a sprinkler and drench all the monkeys with ice-cold water. Pretty soon the brightest monkeys will cotton on that the water is connected to attempts to get to the bananas, and they will stop any monkey who starts up the ladder. The really dimmest monkeys will carry on trying for a while, but more and more monkeys will join in to stop them, until all the monkeys in the cage have learned that to climb the ladder is a Bad Thing.

At this point, you take one of the original monkeys out of the cage and replace it with a new monkey. This monkey will see the bananas and attempt to climb the ladder. The other seven monkeys will scream and yell, and drag the new monkey off the ladder before the water starts up. For a short time, depending on how bright it is, the new monkey will continue trying to get to the bananas, but eventually it will give up, knowing that it will be set upon every time it tries. Once it's learned this lesson, the process can be repeated, replacing another of the original monkeys.

Eventually, the cage will be completely populated with monkeys who have NEVER been drenched with water, but who will all scrabble and fight to prevent any new monkey from reaching the bananas, and will never try to use the ladder themselves. They don't know why, it's just "the way things are done around here." Learned behaviour. Disincentives (or, in enlightened societies, incentives). The answer to Bernard Mathews' prayers.