Beach Adventure

This afternoon Crox Mimina, Canis Croxorum and I took advantage of an exceptionally low tide and some rather dramatic weatherto go down to Cromer East Beach and do some rock-pooling. We were pleased to have discovered this -

a jewel of a Cretaceous fossil sea urchin (Micraster). We've found quite a few fossil sea urchins at Cromer over the past couple of years or so, all of which are now curated in the Crox Minor Musem of Geology. We were also excited - if not exactly pleased - to have found this.

It's a greater weever fish (Trachinus draco), about 15 cm long, which had been caught high and dry by the retreating tide. It was, however, still alive, so I scooped it up onto Crox Minima's spade, and, with the help of Crox Minima's bucket, and Crox Minima herself, carried the fish out to sea where it swam off. I've known of weevers in Cromer for a while but had never seen one. Good job neither of us trod on it - those dorsal fin-spines can deliver an agonizing dose of venom.

The Rickshaw Odyssey Hits Cromer

Last month I wrote about our friends Lianna Hulbert and Simon Etkind who are attempting to pedal 930 miles across the country to raise money for charity. They started at Land's End on 29 June: you can find out all about their Rickshaw Odyssey on their blog, and perhaps make a donation.

There is something quixotic about this act - and also romantic, for Ms Hulbert and Mr Etkind (both 24) are soon to be married. I guess there's nothing that'll try a relationship more than a puncture to a rickshaw in the rain in the middle of nowhere.

When the Croxii had the pleasure of welcoming them to Cromer earlier today, they seem to have survived 730 miles in remarkably good spirits, and are tanned, happy and of course incredibly fit. They complete their odyssey by pedalling into Lowestoft this Sunday.

Here they are on Cromer Beach.
Lianna and Simon on Cromer Beach, earlier today.

They didn't stay long as they had to pedal another seven miles to Mundesley in the hope of finding a campsite. Not, though, without posing for a picture...

And so they pedalled down Cromer High Street, heading eastwards and hopefully into the proverbial record books.

Seal Cull

Beachcombing is one of my favourite things. Over the years I've acquired quite a cabinet of curiosities collected from the strandline. A few days ago I was walking on Cromer East Beach and met a quite neauseous stink. This was traced to a decaying carcass the size of a small dog. So prodigious was the bloat of decay that it was hard to identify what kind of animal it might be.

By yesterday, the stink had largely subsided, most of the soft parts of the animal having gone: it was revealed as a seal. Here it is - the front end is towards the bottom of the picture. I resolved to come back and collect the skull if I possibly could.
You can see the skull towards the bottom left of the picture, largely defleshed and so relatively easy to collect.

Today I was heading to the beach, equipped with plastic bags and penknife. I heard from a friend on the way down that she'd called the Council to come and remove the carcass - which was well above the strandline. That's when Canis croxorum and I hotfooted it down to the beach. While Canis croxorum rolled luxuriously in the noxiously effluvial ichors oozing from the carcass (well, I suppose someone has to), I separated the skull from the spine by slicing through the tendons joining the occiput to the atlas vertebra, steeling myself against the general unpleasantness of the act by yelling defiant slogans such as 'Let me through! I'm a zoologist! With a Ph.D.!'

Not a moment too soon. Hardly had I done this when I saw a Council refuse operative wheeling a bin along the prom...

I got the prize home and had a closer look. Here is the skull in dorsal view...

... and in palatal view. From the damage to the right zygomatic arch and the maxilla, I reckon this seal had been dead for quite a while. There are no teeth in the maxilla (I couldn't find a mandible) and the right maxilla has no sockets at all, all having been eroded away. I suspect that this seal died of old age.
I've now hung the skull on a nail behind the shed to weather a bit more before I prepare it further. When it's dried out I'll use the bleach-on-a-toothbrush trick to disinfect it, and then it can join the glass-topped coffee table (made by yours truly) in which we display our beach treasures.

Director's Cut

The other day I sneakily overheard a tweet from Brian about an iPhone app called 'Camera Bag'. This allows you to effect the most extraordinary transformations on the already-fairly-almost-passable pictures you can take with the iPhone.

For example, here is a picture of Cromer East Beach, taken earlier today, with my iPhone, au naturel.

Here's a filter designed to give a 'square-format toy-camera feel'. (Yes, but why is it called 'Helga'?)


This one, called 'Lolo' (yes, I know, don't ask me) is a vibrant, trippy, saturated holiday snap. Ibiza on acid. Or more acid.

I rather like this wide-screen, moody effect, called 'Magazine' ...

Whereas this one, 'Instant', is meant to replicate those Polaroid photos, you know, you could reproduce them in 8-track cartridges and print them up with your Betamax.

I like the drama of 'Cinema'. You can tell it's cinematic from the overall blueness, and the big black bars, top and bottom.

Meanwhile, here is a rather ordinary monochrome shot ...

... and a somewhat less ordinary one called '1962', designed to recall photojournalism of a 'bygone era'. I know it says '1962', but one almost expects to see Louis Daguerre trying to seduce Julia Margaret Cameron, just out of shot, while Fox Talbot tries to capture the moment.
This one is called '1974', meant to be an aged holiday snap recovered from an ancient album.

To finish with two oddities. First, 'Fisheye', which is just silly ...

... and 'Infrared', which is sillier, but somehow appealing. Especially at closing time.

Ain't technology wunnerful, Ladeez an gennlmens?

For Want Of A Nail ....

This is the cause of all the trouble.


Yesterday morning, Mrs Crox and I were hard at work in our respective cubbyholes, when our browsers stopped responding. Much frustrated pressing of buttons ensued, but a trip to a cupboard in the West Drawing Room found the sauce source of the tzores. Our BT Business Broadband router was surprisingly quiet in the flashing-lights department. Remote investigation of the router revealed that all had indeed gone dead. The router had disappeared from the network lists in all our computers.

Luckily we have a Netgear router on a separate phone line, as a backup - in case of this very eventuality. After much twiddling and wracking of brains I remembered the WEP key I set for this many moons since, and after further twiddling I set the computers to track that router instead. 

Normal service was restored.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

The Netgear router isn't nearly as fast or as powerful as the BT Business Broadband machine, which meant that the signal to my office kept dropping off, and that to Mrs Crox's office in the East Wing was too faint to be viable. Luckily I just happened to have fifteen metres of ethernet cable secreted about my person, just enough to get from the West Drawing Room to the East Wing, so I could patch Mrs Crox's machine into teh interwebz.

Once we'd restored some sort of connectivity, I checked that the phone line going in to the BT Broadband router was OK (it was), and then I called BT's broadband people. After a while I got put through to a very nice and thoroughly clued-up chap called Faroz, and between the two of us we worked out that the router itself had died. 

Or had it?

As he smoothly gave instructions to despatch me a new router for next-day delivery, Faroz said that when the parcel came, I should, first, extract the power supply for the new router, and see if, when applied to the old router, it would come back to life.

Next day, yea, even before our lunch break, the new router arrived just as Faroz said it would, and I did as Faroz had instructed. Leaving the new router in its box, I replaced the old power supply (pictured above) with the new one (just the same, but cleaner). The trusty old router cycled back into life, and now sports a healthy array of green lights, telling me that broadband connectivity had been re-established. 

This is brilliant, because not only do I have a spare router, I don't have to fiddle around reconfiguring my network such that the many Ordinateurs Des Girrafes talk to a brand-new one. Instead, the computers instantly welcomed the old router back like an old friend. The thing is, I'd never have thought of this switch-the-power-supply trick if Faroz hadn't told me.

From this story, my children, one can derive two morals.

First, that one's network functions by virtue of the smooth running of a large number of quite simple components, any one of which can go wrong and cause hours of anxiety and delay, especially in one's efforts to trace what could be any number of faults. This time it was a simple power supply to the router. Two years ago, it was a tiny plastic connector in the BT junction box down the street, the perishing of which screwed up our connectivity for most of that August, until the engineers had managed to track it down. That's when I realized that critical systems need to have some built-in redundancy, and ordered a BT Business Broadband service to run on a separate phone line, different from the one used by our Netgear router, which was our main machine at the time.

Second, that when your livelihood depends on connectivity, you should never go for cheap broadband deals. I pay £££ for my BT Broadband, and my experience shows that it's worth every penny. Faroz at BT gave me expert help and service, and new kit was sent without my having to twitch so much as an eyebrow. So, thanks, BT. 

Here Endeth the Lesson.

Don't You Know There's A Recession On?

Brian is, rightly, baffled by the British public. I am just as baffled, though for slightly different reasons. My bafflement has been occasioned by a specific segment of the British Public, namely, some of our local shopkeepers.

Even at the best of times, the economies of small seaside towns such as Cromer are hanging on by their fingernails. At the moment, quite a few businesses have gone to the wall and empty shops in the town centre are, sadly, rather common. Local traders are the first to complain when a large store such as Tesco threatens to set up on the edge of town - the ongoing conflict between Tesco and the burghers of the neighbouring town of Sheringham is now the stuff of legend.

This is why Mrs Crox and I like to patronize our local shops whenever we can, but some shopkeepers seem curiously reluctant to accept our business. On two occasions recently, shopkeepers told me they'd let me know when they'd checked the availability of items they didn't stock ... but haven't got back to me. What's stopping me trekking to Norwich or even London to shopkeepers who are bit keener to earn a dollar?

On another occasion, Mrs Crox went into a shop to say that the particular photocopying service she required couldn't be provided without the manager being present - and the manager was away for a month. Mrs Crox came home and said (puts on drippy accent) 'Computer Says No'. In a nearby shop, Mrs Crox was told that she shouldn't buy the item she wanted to buy (which was in stock, and in Mrs Crox's hand) because it was 'far too expensive...'

I should say that this attitude isn't universally present - many shopkeepers and traders are splendidly helpful in the way that only small-town traders can be. But, in some cases, it's easy to see why local traders don't want the competition.

Who Was That Masked Man?

The closest railway station to the Maison Des Girrafes is not Cromer, but one just a little inland, called Roughton Road.

The rush hour at Roughton Road hits its peak. Yesterday. Or, in fact, any day (not Sundays. Restrictions may apply).


It's a single track and a single platform, unstaffed, tucked away in the woods. Its isolated estate means that it is occasionally vandalized by some of the more acephalate members of our community. A few days ago, for example, I found that the shelter on the platform had been defaced thus:


On the platform, though, unbesmirched by even those members of the knuckle-dragging pithecanthropoid yokelry wot have learned how to write, if not spell, was this tub of summer bedding.


A few days after I took these photos, the orkish vomit-scrawl had been scrubbed clean from the shelter, as if it had never been - but the summer flowers bloomed on. Clearly, someone - or something - was coming by to water them. But who?

Close inspection of the flower tub revealed this curious inscription.

This clearly raises more questions than it answers. I had not hitherto heard of the Friends of Roughton Road Station (henceforth the FRRS), and no contact details are supplied. A search on Google reveals nothing. The FRRS is clearly a secret organization intent on Holding Back the Forces of Darkness, if only on one tiny woodland halt in North Norfolk. Whoever they are, I salute them.

But dash it all, I consider myself a Friend of Roughton Road Station. I am a frequent user of the station and should like to join the FRRS. So, if anyone out there knows anything about this admirable if mysterious group, perhaps they can tell me how I can join? Is there a dead letter box, somewhere, or will someone with a top-drawer accent sidle up to me on the Pier one day? I am agog to be Initiated into its Rites and Practices.

Rock'n'Roll

It was Christmas, 1987, and there was a hole to fill - a band was needed urgently to play an unexpected gap that had opened up in the Christmas Ents running order. That's when the Ents secretary (Mr R. P., Medicine), who happened to be a bass player, called on his drummer friend Mr. O. E. (Mechanical Engineering) and guitarist brother (Mr. M. P., Chemical Engineering) to help. Mr. M. P. also dragged in his keyboard-playing friend Mr. H. G. (Graduate, Zoology) and the resulting collison collective played a selection of classic rock to tumultuous applause from the two people who turned up. I guess you had to be there.

That marked the birth of Karnage. The band made a return appearance in 1988, and then disappeared from view for nearly a decade. It wasn't until 1997 that Mr M. P. called the band back together, since when it has made sporadic appearances every few years. The apotheosis of the band's zenith was in 2000, when Karnage's concert 'Songs For Eddie' in St Alkmund's Church Hall, Derby, raised more than £3,000 in aid of the support and care of patients with meningitis.

This Saturday just gone Karnage regrouped once again, at the Polish Centre in Derby (that city having become the band's spiritual home) to raise money for a charity that digs wells in a part of Sri Lanka whose water supplies are uncertain. £250 digs one well, and we raised more than £600 - enough for two wells and the buckets to go with them.

For the record the line-up was

Mr M. P. (City Slicker, Surrey) - Fender '57 reissue Stratocaster (built 1982), Gibson Les Paul, Marshall amplification, ElectroHarmonix Electric Mistress flanger, TC Electronics 12-stage phaser, Boss Turbo Overdrive, Jim Dunlop Cry Baby Wah-Wah, Jim Dunlop 1.0-mm picks (the black ones; not the grey ones, which are 0.6-mm, except on the funkier numbers ... listen up at the back, there'll be a quiz later);

Dr R. P. (General Practitioner, Devon) - Squier Precision bass, Hartke amplification;

Mr O. E. (Designs Wheels for Trains, Derby) - 1986 Pearl Export double kit in Smoky Chrome featuring 10”, 12”, 13”and 14” mounted toms, 16” and 18” floor toms and two 22” bass drums;
Ludwig 14” snare and 8” and 10” Tama MiniTymps and 8” and 10” Remo RotoToms (the latter mainly for decoration). Paiste cymbals comprising 14” Sound Edge hi-hats, 16” 505 crash, 15” 2002 crash, 16” 2002 crash, 18” 2002 medium, 22” 505 heavy ride, 18” 2002 chinese, 12” Sound Creation accent/splash, Cowbell, Woodblock (bright red plastic), Traditional bicycle bell.

Dr H. G. (Scientific Editor, Blogger and Wit, Cromer) - Hammond XK-1 organ, Korg TR61 music workstation synthesizer, Carlsbro amplification.

We played a lot of classic rock by Queen (yes, Bohemian Rhapsody), Free, Led Zeppelin; a few more recent things (Coldplay) and some blues and funk. Given that we hadn't played for a couple of years, it all went rather well -- though the inclusion of the SF rock opera 2112 by Rush did, I have to say, try the patience of the audience...

The next venue in the ongoing Trail of Karnage has yet to be determined, though it is likely that it might make it to Cromer in 2012 (if not 2112) to celebrate - no, not the Olympics, but the 50th birthday of one of its more blogospherical residents.

In Focus

I'm very fond of a newsstand magazine called BBC Focus.

It's had a chequered history, veering from gadget geekery (my favourite part of the mag is 'Objects of Desire') to almost a lads' mag, but under the editorship of Paul Parsons and now Jheni Osman, it's become a pin-sharp science and technology monthly accessible to all, and with a strong teenage appeal - teenagers being the hardest demographic to reach, and yet the most vital for the future of science. Anyway, Crox Minor (aged 11), proud to be a geek, loves it.

BBC Focus asked me to be on their Editorial Board a few years ago, and I had been conscious that I had done very little to earn that honour, apart from writing book reviews for them as often as they asked. So a couple of months back I was well chuffed to be asked to be one of their regular columnists, under the title 'The Insider'. My first effort appears in issue 205, the Summer 2009 number. That's the one with this cover, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landings.



Do let me know what you think.

Starting a column from scratch is tricky. Columns that are successful always have a distinctive tone, a voice that's instantly recognizable. Pitching the first one is quite hard. First, what do you write about? The subject for my debut column was chosen for me by BBC Focus News and Features Editor Andy Ridgway - that the European Parliament is thinking seriously about the policy implications of innovations in human enhancement. My first draft was too light. My second, too heavy. So Andy applied the Goldilocks Principle and glued them together.

In the end, I realized that one reason Focus asked me was the tone of my blogs, which are, in a sense, columns, with their own bacterial culture. I am sure they didn't ask me by virtue of a scurrilous rumour circulating on Twitter and elsewhere that I am the next Stephen Fry. I'll admit to being larger than life, with a tendency towards bipolarity and a brain the size of a planet, but I am neither famous, nor gay. Nor am I a gifted novelist, actor, comedian, raconteur or TV presenter. I don't drive a decommissioned London taxi. And, ladies, I don't have Hugh Laurie's phone number.

New Arrival

I'd like to introduce you to the newest arrival in my Wearable Office^TM.

I think it's about the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It took me a long time before I even dared turn it on.

Mrs Crox says it's just a big iPhone, and that she probably ought to file for divorce.