Freedom of speech.

Well Friday and yesterday went pretty well, 1200 and 1500 words respectively, so I’m going to stick at it. I am going to try and do a minimum of 1000 words a day. I may have days off, I haven’t worked that out yet. If I keep this up I may get the thing written by the summer.

An update on the Free Mojtaba and Arash campaign. Arash Sigarchi was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment on Thursday for various offences including aiding foreign anti-revolutionaries and insulting various Iranian big wigs past and present. The BBC News story can be found here. So more letters to write, I guess.

I really don’t understand the logic behind censoring somebody who says offensive things. Of course, everybody has a right not to be subjected to material which is offensive to them and society as a whole has a responsibility to protect children and vulnerable parties from material which might confuse or disturb them. Even in the UK there is a periodical fuss made about those offence, whether it’s Ken Livingstone comparing a reporter (who happened to be Jewish) to a concentration camp guard or Jerry Springer the Opera or whatever.

John Stuart Mill was right about this stuff. He said that people should be allowed to say what they like within the boundaries described above and so long as they are not inciting violence (i.e it’s okay to speak out against corn-sellers so long as you’re not stood in front of an angry mob outside the corn-seller’s house). He believed this for three reasons;

• What is being censored may be true and by censoring it we risk a great loss of knowledge if we imagine ourselves infallible.
• What is being censored may be partly true; there may be at least something useful in what is being said.
• Even if it’s a load of bunkum (not his term), a doctrine remains vital and rational by meeting challenges. Even if our belief is spot-on, without challenge it becomes no more than a prejudice as opposed to the reasoned argument around which we make our decisions.

Strangely enough, the grounds upon which folks most often object to freedom of speech are religious. However, if God is omniscient, omnipotent and good, us mere mortals can’t really do any harm. If what you believe in is the truth, then what book, speech or article could possibly pose a risk to it?

Discipline

Yesterday I had a really good day on my book. I've really been struggling lately because I have been unwell and my concentration just times out. I wait around for a time when I'm really in good shape to do some work and it either never comes or else it comes and goes in ten minutes. This means I haven't been managing a good workcount at all. I am on the third draft so I'm having to chose my words very carefully - I don't want to have to do this again, if it can be avoided. On the first draft I could manage 3000-4000 words on some days, even a bedridden day, my thoughts were just flowing onto the paper - or the screen at least, via the keyboard, but you know what I mean. Thus I had completed an 80,000 word novel in a few months.

Anyway, yesterday I tried a new system of disciplining and pacing myself. I really struggle with this stuff. In particular I struggle with lying down flat and doing nothing when I'm not ready to sleep, even when I am completely knackered and neither use nor ornament (well, maybe a little ornamental). I worked in five, ten and fifteen minute slots, depending on how I got on, then had a rest or did something else (listened to music, read the news etc), then after five or ten miutes I would go back. Very stop-start, but the breaks were short enough not to lose my flow - if I had to work for half an hour, I would time-out before the end and then half an hour's rest would break the flow completely.

Thus I wrote 1860 good words yesterday and am quite chuffed. Hopefully if I stick to it I can make some real progress and have the thing wrapped up before the summer.

On feeling something like normal.

Although I got out on Monday, it was attached to a doctor’s appointment. Last night I got out for completely non-medical reasons for the first time in six weeks when I went to the local wargaming group. If you don’t know what that means, it’s a really sad hobby which I may be forced to explain at some point. Let’s just say that in the same room they hold the role-playing group and that’s much, much sadder - a whole other level of tragedy.

I am quite into this, but it only really justifies my energy because the folks there are a great bunch of people who mostly fall within five years either side of my age. This is important; most of the other people I spend time with are much older than me, [...] is 39 and Pete, my closest friend in Whitby, is 51, the same age as my mother and although this poses no problem between us, I need to remind myself that I am a relatively young person from time to time.

Anyway, I had a really good time, not doing any gaming, but just chatting to people about stuff, life, music, books and films. This was the first time I had been up there since before Christmas. Apart from this long crappy spell I am coming out of, things go up and down and there’s no time of the week where I can be depended upon to be conscious, fully cognoscente and reasonably comfortable. I imagined this would be a problem, that I would have to explain my long absence. I think quite possibly others wonder whether I just can’t be bothered, but if they do they don’t act it. They don’t ask. They are interested as to how I’m getting on, how the book is going, but they don’t need to talk about my having been ill. Perhaps they are embarrassed, but I hope they are simply uninterested. I have even met some of them in the street in my wheelchair (which I don’t take to the group) and they haven’t needed to comment on it at all.

I have wondered whether [...] lectures them on my situation in my absence so they’re all clued up. Then again, perhaps they really don’t care about my disability. Perhaps it really doesn’t make a difference to them at all. Which would be great for me.

Sometimes when you’re unwell and managing symptoms all the time and when illness dominates your life because it stops you doing so many of the things you want to be doing, you feel like this must be written all over your face. You feel humiliated by it; for most people, especially young people, the idea of being out of action for six weeks would be pretty dramatic and yet for me this happens several times a year. And very often people do feel the need to talk about it; they want to know what was wrong, what I might have done wrong, how I occupied myself. The absolute worst thing is when somebody says that they were worried about me. There aren’t many people who, being concerned about me, are unable to make contact by post, telephone or e-mail and yet the very people who feel the need to express their concern in retrospect are the ones I wouldn’t hear from if I had been in hospital for six months.

Then there's the fact of my appalling social confidence of course and how much it helps to be around people I feel like an equal among, but that's another story altogether. My point is that it’s really good when I can be myself and not [...]’s sickly girlfriend who turns up once in a blue moon. Or at least it’s really good when that’s not the way you’re made to feel.

Goldfish Facts #4

Well, yesterday was about human rights, but today is Tuesday and it’s time for Goldfish Facts.

Actually we have a family story involving the Iranian Embassy. I was born on Christmas Eve, 1980 and my parents became certain of my conception at the beginning of May that year. My parents went round to tell my maternal grandparents about me, but were unable to get the news across to them that evening on account of the fact that the SAS was storming the beseiged Embassy live on television. My coming into existence was a mere trifle in comparison. You can read all about it (the siege, not my conception) here.

As for my conception, well my Mum once hinted that I was conceived to the great Adam and the Ant hit “Stand and Deliver”. That’s a whole heap more than I ever needed to know.

So then, today’s Goldfish Facts;

• Goldfish were first kept as pets in China and are considered “baby dragons” in Feng Shui. Thus they are very lucky if you have them in your wealth area (apparently the south east of your main living space). Ideally, you need eight goldfish and one black fish (the black one symbolises protection). Sounds like a load of carp to me…
• The first successful goldfish farm in the United States was opened in Martinsville in 1899. I discovered this on a page of Indiana facts. I guess that’s a state with a lot of history.
• There have been many songs written about goldfish. A search for the word goldfish on the UK version of iTunes produces 45 matches including the songs from Inspiral Carpets 1992 album Revenge of the Goldfish. (Can you tell I’m scraping the barrel here?)

If this is the first time you’ve read Goldfish Facts; check out previous editions #1, #2 and #3.

Oh and while I’m here, I earlier blogged about Yusuf Islam (the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens) having nothing to do with terrorism. Well last week a Judge ruled that allegations by the Murdoch press to that effect (i.e. supporting claims of the US government) were libellous and unfounded. So there. Read about the guy’s good work here.

Free Mojtaba and Arash!

In Iran, two bloggers by the name of Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad are held in detention, apparently arrested following decedent remarks on their blogs. Click above for the Committee to Protect Bloggers or here for the story on BBC News.

The Iranian press is heavily censored and blogging is one way in which journalists and ordinary Iranians feel able to speak their minds, both amongst themselves and to the outside world. Tomorrow, 22nd February, bloggers all over the world are hoping to voice their protests. Below is the letter I wrote to the Iranian Embassy in London and if you feel the same, I suggest you also write or at the very least, e-mail them. The address is: The Iran Embassy, 16 Prince’s Gate, London, SW7 1PT

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to you regarding the detention of “bloggers” Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad in Iran. It appears that these young men are being imprisoned because of things they wrote on weblogs or on-line journals which displeased the authorities in some way.

I am very lucky to live under a government that protects my freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is the most fundamental human right there is, perhaps even more important than physical liberty. Without listening to one another, we cannot learn anything, we cannot differentiate between what we believe and what we know and we cannot progress as human beings, as a society or as a race.

There is nothing to fear from freedom of expression. A bad idea can only revealed as such by being aired. Bad ideas, when heard against the good ones, can’t bring down worthy governments, shake true faith or confuse the minds of adults as to what is right or wrong. I struggle with the idea that anything said by a man can insult any God who created the universe.

Iran is a country often demonised in the West, especially in recent years. Many of us here remain open-minded, seeing Iran as being in a state of transition and not the big bad dictatorship our governments may like to portray it as. However, this sort of action against bloggers flies in the face of all our optimism about the country and offends the sentiments of the very people who support respect and moderation in the West’s dealings with Iran.

It is for the sake of international relations as well as the democracy and stability of Iran that Mr Sigarchi and Mr Saminejad are released and that nobody else is arrested for merely speaking their mind about political affairs.

Yours faithfully, etc, etc.

My day out #2

Today I officially got out. Hurrah!

I had a doctor’s appointment and my friend Pete coincidentally had the appointment directly before me. Apparently it’s another case of having nothing wrong with me except multiple chronic viral infections. I was hoping for anaemia, really hoping for it. Then I could take pills and expect to feel a lot better very quickly, but no such luck. I guess it's good that some of my vital organs are in perfect working order. It's just my brain, my nervous and immune systems that are kaput. It could be worse, right?

My doctor was sympathetic and attempted some morale-boosting proverbs, which were all rather unnecessary now I’m getting better from whatever has been wrong. But the mystery frustrates me. Things have been fairly dramatic, lots of pain, the fainting thing and it’s been going on for about six weeks. Viruses are very mysterious things, there are millions of as yet unidentified viruses constantly mutating – folks occasionally suffer brain-damage or die of a mystery virus. It’s just when you go through this stuff, you want it to have a nice handy label, a mechanistic explanation and preferably a course of tablets that make you feel better.

Anyway, Pete and I decided to go for a coffee. We went to a place cunningly named The Coffee Shop on Skinner Street. I had a middling slice of coffee-cake (it didn’t really taste of coffee, but that might have been just me) and the lady in there was very friendly, letting me borrow her phone - I, having forgotten my mobile and needing to call a taxi home. I know. I don’t go out in weeks and when I do, I manage to forget my mobile phone. What’s with that?
So that was it, my trip out. I am about to go charge up my wheelchair batteries which will have flattened without use in all this time and hopefully I can venture out again later in the week.

All Along The Watchtower

Still not a lot going on here. I have been comparing versions of “All Along the Watchtower.” Can’t make my mind up between Bob Dylan (who wrote it) and Jimi Hendrix. Both are very exciting, but in different ways. Bob Dylan planted the seed, but I think perhaps Hendrix actually gave birth to the song. Perhaps. Although there is an appealling rawness to the Dylan version and I am always in awe at anyone who can make a mouth-organ solo sound edgy and cool.

I also downloaded a Paul Wellar Version from iTunes, but it was rather disappointing. If wet paint made a noise while it dried, that would be it. It lasted six full minutes and the song had finished within three – I keep trying to work out what happens for those last three minutes, but every time I listen to it I get bored and distracted and the next thing I know it has finished and I have been thinking about or doing something else.

This is my exciting weekend; listening to the same song over and over and comparing the merits of different versions.

Meanwhile, the novel is progressing slowly but surely. I want to be writing a thousand words a way but at the moment it’s something if I average five hundred. Someone once told me that Bertram Russell published 2000 words for every day he was alive, but I don’t believe that for a minute. And let’s face it, he didn’t produce too many psychological thrillers, did he? No, exactly. And I’m sure I’m better looking than he was. So there.