Let it Bleed

Over Christmas I read the novel "Let it Bleed" by Ian Rankin. This book is one of a series describing Edinburgh detective John Rebus. Rebus mixes personal oblivion with flashes of obsessive brilliance as a detective and disdain for any kind of establishment.

In this book Rebus a mouth ulcer gives him the reason to see a dentist for the first time in years. After pricking the ulcer the dentist gives Rebus further appointments for half-a-dozen or so fillings.

Reading this, I realised that I probably haven't seen a dentist this millennium, so as part of my plan to take better care of myself I made an appointment yesterday. He was able to see me on the same afternoon and made a quick check-up. My teeth are alright but my gums bled when he poked his pokey-thing down beside a tooth. He asked me whether they sometimes bled when I cleaned my teeth, and I suddenly remembered that they did. I had completely forgotten this, and must have learned to repress it. The first time it happened I probably said to myself that I was too busy with work to bother going to the dentist, and after a while I got used to it. We have arranged further appointments to remove low-lying plaque and stop the inflammation of the gums.

For tea I had a cheese and blood sandwich. Lovely.

Unemployment

My contract runs out on Thursday, and I've taken holiday for this week, so I'm free to do what I like. I'm open to any short-term offers, but am not going to get a proper job again until I feel ready. I've decided to concentrate on getting my life in order before I start working again. I need to become generally active whilst eating well and not getting drunk too much.

Today I read the paper, did 4/5 of the crossword, went for a jog and went shopping. This evening I juggled three torches. A man walking past said that his dog found it fascinating. I practised spinning torches round in my hand and learnt to recognise the smell of burning arm hair.

Standing on Stairs

The campus of Bochum university has lots of stairs. It's a concrete monster of several layers covering a large area. Each layer is connected to the others with concrete steps of various designs, and I keep finding myself stood on the top step, or sometimes on the middle step, wondering what to do.

There is a large protest today in Bochum against the closure of the Nokia factory. I hope that the protesters know what they are letting themselves in for. A lesser known event of the Second World War was the winter war between the Soviet Union and Finland.

Clock Watching

Every minute I spend in my office drags me down. I can feel my mood worsen as soon as I wake up on a work day, and by the time I sit at my desk I feel sad and annoyed. I then surf the internet, drink coffee and watch the time slowly go by. This is my favourite clock. It shows the time in America, but has a nice picture of the earth, so I can look out of the window and compare the darkness/light with that on the map. The sun just set over Bochum.

New Year's Equivalent of "Bah, Humbug"

I got a bad cold and spent New Year's Eve in bed. I was awoken by a barrage of fireworks and spent the next three hours listening to bangs and whizzes while trying to get back to sleep. In this time I saw the air fill with fog, so that the tree at the end of the garden became faint and blurred. Eventually I fell asleep.

I was therefore delighted to read that I wasn't the only one to have a bad time. Bochum was covered by a smog so bad that buses stopped their service and taxis only went for special rates: "Sorry mate, I can't even read the meter in this fog". Car drivers often gave up, as described in a comment from kindly citizen Ralf Kelm.

We were stood on the pavement when a woman stopped her car and asked if we knew where we were. She thought she was still on the motorway, but was surprised to see so many houses. The motorway exit was about half a mile away. You could see absolutely nothing. We took her with us for the next five hours. After 7am the visibility improved enough for her to continue her journey.

Now I can't prove that the fog was due to the fireworks, although I suspect it was. Smog, as seen for decades in cities such as London (and probably Bochum and the whole of the Ruhr) was caused by air pollution from houses and factories. The London smog is described here by lost motorcyclist Arthur Musson.

On one occasion, I was motor cycling down Queens road Yardley on my way home from Mary’s, when I realised I was not on the road. I stopped, put my foot down, and found that I was in a field.

A useful measure for air quality is PM10 concentration. PM10s are particles less than 10 micrometres in diameter, and their concentration can be described in micrograms/cubic metre (μg/m³). A typical concentration of these particulates is 30 μg/m³ . During the great London smog of 1952, which killed around 12,000 people, the concentration was estimated to be 4000-14000 μg/m³. The German federal ministry for the environment measured the PM10 concentration over the last-but-one New Year, and found that in a city area the concentration rose to almost 4000 μg/m³ just after midnight, which is the lower estimate for the concentration in the great London smog. Congratulations, fellow citizens, you've created a minor environmental disaster! The ministry's recommendation is that people

limit their personal use of fireworks, or even do without them completely.

Happy New Year!