Streetlamp RH407

Oh! if I a penny had
For every time that I went mad
I'd bank them in a biscuit tree
And draw the interest for my tea

Yes. Sixteen metres past the SPAR, left under the arch off West Street, grid ref:052197, Streetlamp RH407 stands proud and tall, a shining beacon of hope and more general lampitude, and king of all he illuminates of that alley down to those houses down by there...

REJ:- Nawrte, Streetlamp RH407 -

SLRH407:- *Ooof!* -

REJ:- Mind your head! -

SLRH407:- Don't worry - I'm used to it. *Ouch!* -

REJ:- Watch that! That's Sioned's mother's commemorative jockstrap -

SLRH407:- Sorry! Bit cramped your place, -

REJ:- Wel if you'd rather go back out in the rain -

SLRH407:- No, No! I was only saying -

REJ:- Wel don't. And that anglepoise is spoken for, so you can stop with the flickering -

SLRH407:- I wasn't! I was just -

REJ:- I've heard all about you streetlamps, and your streetlamply ways, RH407, wel not in my house. As long as you are somewhat partially under my roof -

SLRH407:- Ok, Ok! I won't do it again, honest! Lovely set of springs though -

REJ:- Stop it!...Oooh! I see what you mean....yes...Mmmmmm....nawrte, where was I? -

SLRH407:- Just over there, Richard, on the sofa -

REJ:- Ah yes. I still am. Diolch. Now Streetlamp RH407, you must have seen some sights in your time -

SLRH407:- Oooh yes, yes indeed! Indeed I have, Richard! The sights I have seen! The stories I could tell! I could tell you in fact, right here, right now -

REJ:- Wel go on then! Though perhaps not the one about Meinir Thomas -

SLRH407:- I've still got the dent -

REJ:- You're not alone. Do one of the others. Like she did -

SLRH407:- By Edison I shall! Can I count on your discretion? -

REJ:- You can try, but my abacus -

SLRH407:- Well one night, Richard, a dark, lonely night, - it was night-time you see - I woke up, slightly red at first - you know how it is -

REJ:- Been there lampy, been there -

SLRH407:- There was a cat. Miaowing, just at the back of the Red Cross shop. -

REJ:- Oooh! What colour was it? -

SLRH407:- Black. Everything is black, Richard. But when I looked at it, it became a sort of dark brown. With white paws -

REJ:- Unusual -

SLRH407:- I thought so -

REJ:- Please continue -

SLRH407:- It miaowed quite plaintively, for maybe ten minutes - perhaps in hope of some food or comfort, a morsel of nutritional or emotional sustenance, a scrap, a crumb, perhaps the kindly brush of a fellow mammal, -

REJ:- *miaooooooow!* -

SLRH407:- Bit louder, down a semitone -

REJ:- *MIIAAaaaaaoowW!* -

SLRH407:- That's it. Then it looked up, and trotted off into the night. -

REJ:- Oooh! I wonder where it went. And what it saw. And what stories it could tell. And did it find that morsel crumb of nutritional and/or emotional sustenance. And -

SLRH407:- It got run over by Dai Edwards' Mazda 323 -

REJ:- The red one? -

SLRH407:- Black, Richard. Everything is black before I look at it. But yes, the red one. -

REJ:- Perhaps another -

SLRH407:- It was a dark, dark night. A dark and lonely night. All around was dark. Dark as sable, dark as coal, dark as -

REJ:- Yes, yes! Get to the good bit! -

SLRH407:- I'm setting the scene! -

REJ:- Sorry - I just get impatient. Sioned says I always go off before -

SLRH407:- As I was saying, it was a dark, dark, lonely night. All was dark. I woke up, slightly red at first, and saw some fag butts on the pavement. One was still glowing! -

REJ:- Oooh! It must have been recently cast! -

SLRH407:- Undoubtedly. One becomes expert in these matters in my line of work. Observation, Richard. Observation, then illumination. What sights had that fag butt seen? What stories could it tell? Was it from lover's lips untimely ripped and tossed? An urgent text, a failing friend?, a fortune won and lost, what end? What inspired that parting hand? What caused the lately-littered land? Beneath the light of -

REJ:- Ok that's enough. What happened? -

SLRH407:- It rolled into the gutter and went out. -

REJ:- One more then. That's all my heart can take -

SLRH407:- It was a dark, dark, -

REJ:- ffs -

SLRH407:- It was a less than light, post-day. -

REJ:- It's the element of surprise that gets you -

SLRH407:- Streetlamp RH406 woke up before me. I looked across the street, and saw something very strange. Or should I say noticed - as I'd seen it before -

REJ:- You've saved the best till last, I can tell -

SLRH407:- His face was lit up, and so was the pavement beneath him. But inbetween... -

REJ:- *...zzzzzzzz...* -

SLRH407:- ...I mean, I could see he was looking at the floor...but -

REJ:- *...zzzzzzzz...* -

SLRH407:- It was invisible. The inbetween. I could see right through it to the house behind. The light from the house...-

REJ:- *...zzzzzzz...* -

SLRH407:- ...the light from the house passed through the light from RH406...the invisible light....

REJ:- *...zzzzzzz...* -

SLRH407:- And so I noticed light is invisible, and it passes through other light completely unaffected. Even though the photons must collide -

REJ:- *...zzzzzzz...Snort!* - You only had to look around...anywhere -

SLRH407:- I'm not a swivel lamp. I can only look in straight lines -

REJ:- Try again a bit smaller. Look through that fence -

SLRH407:- I'm not Superlamp -

REJ:- Through those gaps I meant -

SLRH407:- I've gone cross-eyed -

REJ:- Wel, don't interfere with yourself -

SLRH407:- There's only one of me here now - you can see that -

REJ:- Who was it then? -

SLRH407:- My shadow from a parallel universe -

REJ:- I've got a splitting head.

I'm sorry I haven't a Dragon's Den

Bluelips Humph:- Hello and welcome to I'm sorry I haven't a Dragon's Den, the antidote to business gameshows. As usual, Samantha will be scoring this evening. Incidentally, Samantha has taken up a new hobby, making honey-scented candles. To put on her new furniture. To listen to the Eurovision song contest. On vinyl. The honey is from her own small hive.

*sigh*

She says she's hoping Sven will come with his 12"s and watch her handling her 38 bees during the Greek entry while she gets the honey and wax off the tall boy.

Let's meet the teams. On my right, Theo Peechimspediment and Duncan Jailbird, and on my left, token female sociopath and Thetallone.

*applause*

Bearded one:- What about me? -

BHumph:- No, you got caught trying to buy a baby for cash. Here is the first pitch:-

Herr Tzinger:- Guten abend. Ich haben ein szuper business plan fur machen ze grossen heaps of geld. Ya. -

Duncan Jailbird:- Are you using Google translate? -

HT:- Ich vollen runnen ein transnational commercial paedophile ring -

Theo Peechimspediment:- What are your last three year's audited accounts? -

HT:- Hier ist ein picture of mein house -

Theo Peechimspediment:- What are your last three year's audited accounts? -

HT:- Du only ever hast ein question dumnkopf -

Duncan Jailbird:- Paedophilia is usually a family business, so ah'm oot. -

Thetallone:- What is your USP? -

HT:- Immunity from prosecution. -

Token female sociopath:- Impressive. How long have you been in this business? -

HT:- 2000 years -

Tfs:- Hmmm....you do have first-mover advantage -

HT:- Vatican Crescent! -

*applause*

The abiolution of evogenesis

Semi-bulimic 'Tubby' Evans, has a new job as an eating dog for the anorexic, following a successful anti-discrimination appeal to the European court of canine rights. In a landmark ruling, the court upheld his claim to lupine concestry, by 12 barks to 3, declaring Tubby to be 'dog in all but form and function'. The plaintiff has asked for 13 million other species to be taken into consideration.

REJ:- Wel Duw, duw, there you have it, isn't it? A forty page pull-out on the rygby Cwpan y Byd. Yes. Shane 'magic daps' Williams. Wel, I've put down my Western Mail, and am gazing out of the window like a tired goat -

*slam!*

REJ:- Aha! That sound most surely heralds the departure of my little nestoffireants. Sioned is off to her co-dependency cure group. She has to go once a week, and do what they say, or she'll be cured. Yes. But everyone should have a hobby - keeps the mice down. Now today we have Dr. A.G.Cairns-Smith to present an obsolete solution to a non-question. I don't know why either. I do know how though. He's going to use his mouth, preadaptated for ingestion, but which now does words too. Dr. A.G. Cairns-Smith! Croeso i -

Dr.AGCS:- Llanfihangel-y-Creuddun. Yes. Some beginnings are more obvious than others -

REJ:- Wel, I've no idea what that meant, but let's go back in time now -

Dr.AGCS:- Oooh goody! -

REJ:- Yes, people like that sort of thing - so let's go back in time to before your quantum consciousness fluff book, to when you were a genius. -

Dr.AGCS:- Oh, lets go a bit further.

REJ:- Take me all the way bigboy! -

Dr.AGCS:- Well I might stop at physics -

REJ:- Thank fuck for that. You've got to leave a little bit of magic. Not a lot! ahaha. That was my Paul Daniels. Actually....I don't want him. You have him -

Dr.AGCS:- ? -

REJ:- I'd play Mike Phillips for the Springbok game. He's a nasty -

Dr.AGCS:- At some point you're going to have to pretend to be interested, or it won't work -

REJ:- Professor Smithcairns! I have always wondered, which came first? the chicken or the egg? Yes. Ever since I saw 'Chicken run'. I was quite surprised to learn chickens couldn't fly too - the premise of the film. Perhaps it was intended for an urban audience -

Dr.AGCS:- Speciation was solved in 1859. But keep it as a short-cut cliche to mean a paradox if you like -

REJ:- Ok I will. What was the next thing I was pretending to find important? -

Dr.AGCS:- Well, the origin of life you dimwit. The first cell - that sort of thing -

REJ:- But Dr.Venternstein already makes better life from non-life. And the big G couldn't make a book. It's a mismatch. Like Shane Williams against Brian Habana -

Dr.AGCS:- It is the greatest mystery of all time. After time -

REJ:- Wel, you feed me my lines then and I'll type them out while secretly thinking of the rygby -

Dr.AGCS:- *scribble!.....rustle!* -

REJ:- .....AGCTTGCAACTGCGTAGCTAGGACAGTCGATUAGCTAG......?!

Dr.AGCS:- Hang on, you need this transcriptor...

REJ:- er...

Dr.AGCS:- I've made it out of 1cm beads, each representing -

REJ:- Just say it's complicated -

Dr.AGCS:- And it's gone three times round your village -

REJ:- It's a town! - the oldest in mid-Wales, the gateway to the -

Dr.AGCS:- But that's not all you'll need. You'll also need this read/write machinery, a chemobio industrial complex, an enterprize zone estatesworth of factories, a -

REJ:- You're using more letters than is necessary -

Dr.AGCS:- Oooh! Good one. I'll just say it's complicated then. And all the size of very small compared to very larger things. But that wasn't the main point -

REJ:- Of course not. Er...

Dr.AGCS:- The main point was, and is, that the system is interdependent. And so we have a paradox, like the -

REJ:- Like the goose and the egg! And the non-flying chickens. They must be good at climbing trees. Wel, now I am interested. Because Stephen Jones is injured, and Priestland has been playing very well -

Dr.AGCS:- And the only way to get a highly complex interdependent system is by evolution -

REJ:- Hook could play fullback -

Dr.AGCS:- Shame about Henson -

REJ:- Yes, I'll never know what he saw in that nymphomaniac multi-millionairess -

Dr.AGCS:- You say 'Evolution appears to require a lot of complex interdependent machinery, that could only have evolved, what is the least amount of machinery required for evolution?, none would be good' -

REJ:- Evolution appears to require a lot of complex interdependent machinery, that could only have evolved, what is the least amount of machinery required for evolution?, none would be good -

Dr.AGCS:- I'm glad you asked that question, Richard. The answer's none. -

REJ:- But you said -

Dr.AGCS:- Can I say 'naked' without you doing some puerile 'joke'? -

REJ:- Life is a gamble -

Dr.AGCS:- I prefer 'naturally occurring machinery' -

REJ:- Wel, if you can just make up your definitions -

Dr.AGCS:- The word was made up rather later. Before we knew approximately all life is invisible. By species, by biomass, by -

REJ:- By thunder hurry up I'm getting bored again -

Dr.AGCS:- It's rather difficult to draw a line in the soup. In fact it's silly - nothing particularly lifey either side of any line then -

REJ:- You're just miffed the 'impossible' molecules-of-life fall out of the sky on a regular basis. Like space croutons -

Dr.AGCS:- Parable of the Sower -

REJ:- Some fell on stony ground -

Dr.AGCS:- I can go pre-soup. Before the traditional starter. Just because the likelier answer is easypeasylemonsqueezy doesn't make mine not fantabulous. And much cleverer - I solved a harder problem than there was -

REJ:- You couldn't get simpler -

Dr.AGCS:- Naked genes. -

REJ:- *wince!* -

Dr.AGCS:- You're meant to say 'What's a naked gene?' -

REJ:- What's a...*Gnnnnrrrr!* I can't do it -

Dr.AGCS:- It will get better with time -

REJ:- Been forty years -

Dr.AGCS:- A naked gene is a gene with no separate phenotype. The phenotype is intrinsic to the structure. Thus replication, heredity, - evolution - requires no machinery at all...-

REJ:- And there is such a thing? -

Dr.AGCS:- Oooh heaps - a worldful. Have a look -

REJ:- You're not expecting anyone to read 'Genetic takeover' surely? -

Dr.AGCS:- ...mutation, adaptation, exaption - all intrinsic to the -

REJ:- There you are - you can make up words fine. But you had to choose -

Dr.AGCS:- Surely Hooky for outside-half.

The Fifth Estate

Indeed. Wel, we all remember the Gulf War - pick a number - during the entertaining Q-out-of-James-Bond drivel bit at the starts, when the TV proclaimed that a spy satellite could see a dime and call heads or tails, but somehow couldn't see a big fuck-off missile base. Not if there wasn't one. Now a shit country, that can't beat up Texas, I mean Iran, in 8 years of trying - no matter how much you paid them - represents a very clear and present danger of horseshit on the newyddion. Hmmm....can't seem to find that BBC interview with Kelly's paramedics....never mind.

But everyone likes a kindly elder brother to do their editing for them. Isn't it? Who among us has the time and insomnia and paranoid delusions to compare the World Service breaking news in the small hours, with the corrected 6pm version? Certainly not me. I've got better things to do. Yes. TV licensing vans operate in my area. Do they? I've never bought one of their 'ice-creams'.

Anyway. Gyda fi heddiw, was going to be wikileeks founder, whateverisnamewas, only he has been suddenly taken criminal. And advised not to comment. Instead we find ourselves delighted to encroeso Dr.Pleasewatcheastenders, Minister for Freedom from information.

Dr.PWE:- Hello. -

REJ:- Watcher. -

Dr.PWE:- Lovely day -

REJ:- Good just to be alive -

Dr.PWE:- I can control the weather you know. I first noticed -

REJ:- Imelda Marcos. Nawrte. Truth - good or bad? -

Dr.PWE:- Bad. That might be the truth. You wouldn't know! -

REJ:- Hmmm....what about this wikileeks then isn't it wasn't it don't you etc?

Dr.PWE:- Bad! Very bad. Very bad for security -

REJ:- What do you mean, security? -

Dr.PWE:- Well, my job security for a start. And...er...national security. Yes, that was it -

REJ:- How is it bad for national security? -

Dr.PWE:- I'm afraid I'm not at liberty -

REJ:- Lovely summing up. But try this truth drug -

Dr.PWE:- They don't work -

REJ:- I just wanted a hug. Lie down and have a drink then -

Dr.PWE:- That's not drinking, not really -

REJ:- Wel, I'll wire you up to Jeremy Kyle's allimportant lie detector then -

Dr.PWE:- You do realise we are at code amber do you? -

REJ:- What's code amber? -

Dr.PWE:- Code amber means unattended luggage might be lost. -

REJ:- Oooh what's code red then? -

Dr.PWE:- Code red means it's the annual budget review, and time to not-announce all the threats we've prevented -

REJ:- Wel, how about for a Scooby snack then? -

Dr.PWE:- Every man has his price. Make it two and you're on -

REJ:- Nope. One or no deal -

Dr.PWE:- You can't break me....you bastard!....whimper! -

*crunch!...mmmmm!*

Dr.PWE:- Ok. It's like this. When you're in a war on terror, it is often a good idea to support terrorist regimes. If that's what you're against -

REJ:- Gadaffi -

Dr.PWE:- Bless you -

REJ:- I understand. Er...

Dr.PWE:- And if you're against torture, it is an even gooder idea to torture people. To prevent torture you see -

REJ:- With you so far...let me try one....if you are pro human rights, the first thing you should do is -

Dr.PWE:- Violate them -

REJ:- I was going to say that! -

Dr.PWE:- There may be an opening for you in -

REJ:- And a society that scorns international law, conducts illegal wars, and tortures and arbitrarily imprisons without trial, is -

Dr.PWE:- A society that must be defended at all costs! -

REJ:- Not one already lost? -

Dr.PWE:- Not at all. That is an extraordinary rendition. -

REJ:- Perhaps these values could be exported! And even work their way back to us! -

Dr.PWE:- A virtuous circle! The exclamation marks could be patronising btw -

REJ:- I hope so. Nawrte, you've convinced me, but you'd better make something else up to justify your existence to the fence-sitters. Try secret defence plans -

Dr.PWE:- Secret defence plans.

REJ:- Perhaps ham it up a bit -

Dr.PWE:- Secret defence plans are very important. It's not just 'attack their military and infrastructure, what are on Google maps' -

REJ:- Of course not - that's what they'll be expecting. There's 'check the receipts' too -

Dr.PWE:- Bill Hicks. Sort the rebuilding contracts out first of course -

REJ:- Quick! Say AbaraAlQuaeda! -

Dr.PWE:- Couldn't organise a digital camera.