Looking Out To Sea

Monday night’s Cafe Scientifique was magnificent and I feel very sorry for all those people who didn’t come. It was about synaesthesia and given by Julia Simner from Edinburgh University.

Synaesthesia seems to be about as fascinating a subject as anything to study, with all sorts of revealing facts about language, learning and development, neuroscience, memory and childhood lifestyles being wrapped up in the heads of synaesthetes.

So what is synaesthesia? Essentially, it is “creation” of sensations when unrelated parts of the brain are activated. For instance, tastes might also give the sensation of texture on the back of the hand, or words might activate tastes or colours. The pairings are related to the proximity in the brain for the different sensations — associated pairs always turn out to be adjacent in the brain. For a particular stimulus the sensation will always be the same for that person — “William” will always taste of potato for that person.

So, some interesting facts:

• If you get a colour sensation when reading letters then the colours will not be arbitrary, though any two synaesthetes may disagree on the particular colours. The commonest letters and commonest colours often pair up: ‘A’ is often red and so on.
• Forcing non-synaesthetes to choose colours for the letters of the alphabet tends to produce very similar links between the commonest colours/letters.
• Word/taste synaesthetes have a similar distribution of tastes, according to their childhood diet. So there will be many sweets and sweet-flavoured words, and few or no alcoholic ones.
• Synaesthesia is a heritable condition because it is caused by a hyper-connecitivity in the brain. I asked whether this has any effect on prevalence of epilepsy, though she didn’t know. She was aware that many synaesthetes seemed to complain of migraine.
• The extra sensations can be useful in test situations — letter-colour synaesthetes tend to perform better in spelling tests. People who see colours when hearing words are better at transcribing voices when listening to noisy signals like a badly tuned radio.
• Most synaesthetes seem to have only one form of synaesthesia though it can happen that many sensations can kick off many others, which can be quite discomfiting.
• Some synaesthetes see a ‘ticker tape’ transcription in front of them as they hear voices — literally like their own private subtitles.

There were loads of other fascinating things that we spoke about that evening. To get a little taste of the subject why not read up on Dr Simner’s appearance in Nature — she was on the podcast which has a transcript online as well as in the journal. (I think I made her day by mentioning that I remembered her on the podcast from two years ago. She thought I was the only person who must have listened to it. So go listen!)

Last week we started hunting for a new pan set, as we didn’t own any ordinary pans. We have a couple of Le Creuset cooking dishes but they’re not very practical for a lot of things — you wouldn’t whip up a chocolate sauce in one!

We found a nice set in Frasers, but it was the last in stock and one of the pans had received a substantial dent in the side, quite near the base. These things were quite sturdily built so it must have been some serious force that made the dent. We decided that it wasn’t worth the risk, even with another discount added for damaged goods. We found the pans for slightly cheaper online and they arrived through the post yesterday afternoon. (It’s interesting to see who comes snooping when you get stuff delivered to your work address. Some people you never expect turn out to be big cooking enthusiasts!)

The next problem is one of storage. We bought some metal kitchen shelves to store these shiny new cooking implements, but that means drilling and stuff, which I’m not really sure about. I don’t really know how to secure shelves to walls. I am a failure as a man. :-(

I have been more successful in other areas of the kitchen. Despite initial confusion (read: complete bafflement when reading the instructions) we now have two beautiful sliding bins under the sink, for separation of packaging, tins and ordinary food waste. This isn’t just rubbish, this is an Integrated Recycling System.

We also have a dining table and two chairs. I have run out of steam to assemble the other chairs, but with the window seat that still leaves room for four people to sit down together (provided they move the flat-pack boxes of course). If I get my act together I may get some photos of the new place online soon. It’s mostly boxes though…

We’ve been discussing what we would do for a dining table for a while now. The kitchen is a very important place for both of us and so the table has to be something inviting and comfortable to sit at. You might think “it’s a table, what can be wrong?” but there are uninviting tables. I think of these as Formal Tables. You know the kind — smooth and sleek, with expensive dark wood and a gleaming polish. You can’t put a coffee cup on a Formal Table. You certainly can’t put your hands on a Formal Table. Formal Tables have ten types of cutlery laid out on them. Formal Tables are cold even when they’re warm. Formal Tables are not for me.

But the big point in my mind, so big that I didn’t even notice it was there, was the fact that I wanted a normal table. I didn’t want fancy in any way — rectangular in shape, wooden in material, having four stout legs and being flat on top. You know: a table. And yet nothing we did could satisfy such a simple request. It was either legs in the wrong place so someone could be assured of an uncomfortable seat, or artificial aging and distressing, or some other needless change. In the end we found what we needed at IKEA.

This seems to be a theme, and I wonder if there’s something deeper to it. My idea is that people have an archetype in their mind when they go shopping — we were looking for the Platonic table but everybody was selling something that differed from this ideal. It seemed that every time there was something that conflicted with our ideal table it was because the designer had ignored the obvious route (flat table, legs in the corner, etc) and done something “clever”. And wrong.

The same happens when clothes shopping, for me at least. A casual shirt can be perfectly plain and yet have three arbitrarily-placed rivets down the left sleeve. There is no explanation for this, just the strange whim of the designer. Neither is there any way in which this riveted shirt can be considered “better” than a plain shirt. I can only suggest that designers don’t feel they are doing a job unless they can make a mess of something that was fine to start with.

Several years ago I read an article on design called The Bathing Ape Has No Clothes (and other notes on the distinction between style and design) which brought instant clarity to something I had been gently working my way around and towards but ultimately failing to pin down — the difference between design and style. If you have not read this article I strongly urge you to do so.

It occasionally pops into my head when I’m shopping for clothes and all I can find are things which have been styled past the point they were “finished”. This, I think, is why shops like IKEA or Gap¹ do so well — because if there is design it is purposeful and the styling isn’t tacked on. I don’t know if I’m correct in my observation or what the reasoning would be. Crap designers? Boredom? I’ve heard it said that once an object becomes a commodity then companies do their best to create a brand, a lifestyle that people can be persuaded to buy with the object. Hence Coke and Pepsi, McDonalds and Burger King and so on. I wonder whether these low-level design fripperies are an expression of that — few big companies feel bold enough to sell something unadorned, because you might go elsewhere. And in the end, we did.

So what’s been happening? Since Friday night we have been officially moving out/moving in, depending on what your frame of reference is. The whole time we were at the old flat we talked about “moving out” but now it seems a strange phrase. We moved in! We’re here now.

Nine months ago on our first night in the old flat we went to The Sizzling Scot for food. We ate large meals and got rather drunk on hand-poured measures of fine whisky. We decided a reprise was the best way to finish our time at the old flat. We went out together, ate rather too much, had a pleasant chat with the head waiter about moving house, and got given two whiskies before we left, this time on the house. A fine establishment!

We were up on Saturday morning to pack furiously, though I think the only things furious were the headaches. Between one and two o’clock a bunch of friends came with vehicles and we started ferrying stuff to the new flat. It just so happens that most of Edinburgh is closed or diverted at the moment because we’re working towards a city tram system in 2011. This makes moving across town all the trickier.

By about four o’clock the heat and the hard work had everyone else running for home and comfort. We still have at least one more car full of stuff to ferry over before we’ve properly “moved”. Even a couple of heavy bags and a rucksack taken by bus didn’t make much of a difference.

In the new place we are gradually making little safe havens — most notably the kitchen, which looks quite normal. (Apart from the missing dining table and chairs; that is a small flaw.) We spent a good evening yesterday unpacking lots of boxes and putting things in kitchen cupboards. Nothing is in a permanent position yet. We’ll just place everything and see what happens when we need to use things on a regular basis. Some stuff will be moved to easier access places, and other stuff hidden away.

Our furniture buying has been quite unsuccessful — unless you count ruling things out as a success. I think our biggest problem with the “ruling things out” technique is we don’t stop once we’ve ruled out all but one item. So having ruled everything out we have to start looking for more options.

As for successes — I baked bread this evening and Helen cooked stir fry. This counts as proper food preparation, I think, even if we only have one pan. I had some problems with the bread but it was my first time with this recipe and with this oven. Things will fall into place when I’ve had practice and more experience of both.

We’re both on holiday until Wednesday to give us time to get everything sorted — including transporting our old sofa to Helen’s brother and making a trip to Ikea for all those little essentials. More details to follow, when I can think of them.