The Return Visit
Three years ago I decided that the best way to do the return trip was by train. It’s a bit more expensive than by plane but means lesser impositions on friends, ferrying me to and from Avignon rather than Marseilles, and I can choose to travel at social hours. For the past two years this has worked perfectly, this year? Oh dear. On the outward trip the train from Avignon incurred a delay of 45 minutes; an announcement said that two passengers had been removed from the train by police at an unscheduled stop at Creusot. Fortunately I had 90 minutes to make the connection to Eurostar at Lille so there was no problem. On the return journey the trip was smooth as far as Lyon when the train stopped for 3 hours, a result of Marseilles station being closed because of demonstrations. Friends Jacques and Claudine had to wait three and a half hours for me. I owe them a really good dinner.
Anyway I arrived on time in London in the evening. The following morning to meet long-time friend Eric for lunch. We had worked together on many occasions ans he, notably, secured for me the contract to write my second book. Eric is currently very active in local politics in the west London suburbs and we always have lots to talk about.After lunch I caught the train to Glasgow where I was met by my daughter.
For the next five days, as usual, we did little of note except enjoy one another’s company “en famille”. On the Saturday Natalie drove me to see life-long and ex-Mollanais friends Steve and Jo near Peebles. In the following days we visited the Science Centre and the Burrell Collection. The former is a very
large Four-storey building full of exhibits demonstrating scientific points in which children can participate. My granddaughter Eilidh was in perpetual mtion. The Burrell Collection is a museum and art gallery that had a painting day for children; Eilidh drew me some attractive pots. The weather was about par for this time in Scotland, some light rain but sunny interludes.
When I make the trip to Britain there are some things that are difficult to find here and that I always have to consume: bacon sandwiches, bitter beer, fish and chips and a good Indian curry. A bacon roll, not the French ”bacon” but “poitrine fumée” is a standard Scottish breakfast; English bitter beer is a “bière ambrée” but not at all sweet and I’ve found no Belgian or French equivalent; fish (always coated in batter) and chips can be found here but not often; and a good Indian curry to me means a lot of chilli and I have very few friends here who like a lot of chilli. I had one on the evening of my birthday. They were a very enjoyable few days.
On the 15th of October I took the train back to London and, in the evening, went to see life-long friend Margaret. She had a cold and had lost her voice but we somehow managed to chat even with my bad hearing.
The following day I met my son Carl for lunch, another curry. We had a good chat, talked about dis work and girlfriend and I tried to impress on him the importance of having confidence in his own abilitites; he has had difficulties in the past but, in my view, great ability, above all in IT disciplines.
Along the way over these few days I bought some gifts for friends here but also a lot of spices. You can get most of them here, although not tamarind paste, but in an Indian shop in Britain I bought four times the quantity for the same price as those small pots you find in supermarkets here. I also bought 60 blue crocus bulbs which I shall plant across the road from my kitchen window.
And then the journey home……..
AI (IA in French)
This is a follow-on from my last post. A good erstwhile American friend, Bob Barton, vice-president of Engineering for Burroughs Corp at the time, was a frequent visitor to my house in England when he was this side of the Atlantic. In the 1970s he complained about the lack of intelligent activities in American children. Specifically he worried that all children had hand calculators and believed implicitly in the results without first doing an approximation check or realising that a failing battery could produce false results. Later he complained that, as visiting professor of Salt Lake university the majority of his students were Indian or Chinese; American students dominated in law or business studies courses, which promised the most money later but which didn’t embody the disciplines needed in the future. A youth focussed on money in a society where money is god is not surprising but automatic acceptance of automatically generated results is very dangerous. Hence Trump?
And that, in essence, is the problem with AI. The point came up in my conversation with Eric, both of us having IT backgrounds. I said that I couldn’t understand the fears around AI and Eric’s explanation amounted essentially fear of automatic acceptance of results as true and, worst of all, undisputed and automatic action on that assumption. Come back Edsger Dijkstra, we need you.
Politics
Friends here say that the coming presidential elections are likely to face me with a choice between Melenchon and Le Pen, the devil and the deep blue sea. I just have to hope that that is not the case. Both want France to leave the EU, which would effectively kill it. If that were to happen the extreme right will have won in Europe in their attempts to avoid taxes and Russia also will h have won in its attempts to splinter the EU. It’s a horrifying prospect. Could NATO, the only viable defence against Russian expansion plans, survive it?
