July 25, 2025 • 57 mins
This week on Nonsense in the Chaos, I finally sat down with someone who's become a bit of a mystery and a marvel to me over the past few years: Ray Howard.
When I first heard of Ray, he was introduced with a wink and a grin as “the island’s hobo.” That label never sat quite right with me – and after our conversation, I know why. Behind the weather-beaten clothes and wandering spirit is a razor-sharp mind with a deep curiosity for the unseen structures that shape our world.
Ray is, in truth, a travelling intellectual. Though often spotted on Sark, he’s mainly based in Oslo and has an intense fascination with the mechanics of linguistics – not just how we speak, but what our words hide, what they reveal, and how meaning lives between the lines. Our chat spiralled into the philosophy of language, the layers beneath conversation, and the strange, shifting relationship between truth and perception.
It wasn’t just a talk – it was a peeling back of the layers of meaning. Ray’s mind dances between ideas like stepping stones, and I found myself running to keep up. In the best way.
If you’re into language, travel, or challenging assumptions, this episode is for you. And if you've ever passed someone off with a label – even playfully – this one might just make you look again.
#47 Let’s Kick this Reality to the Curb & Be the 51%
I’m feeling rebellious, disruptive, and fed up with the status quo. It’s time for a change—and it has to rise from the soil, the stories, and the people at the roots. No more waiting. No more hoping someone else has it handled. They don’t. We have to do this. It’s on us now.
In this week’s episode of Nonsense in the Chaos, I’m cracking open the real questions: What are we going to do about this mess we’re in? How do we turn the ship before it sinks? And what does it mean to choose the side of life when the world’s on fire?
The music and artwork is by @moxmoxmoxiemox
Nonsense in the Chaos is available on all podcast platforms or you can listen to it here… https://nonsenseinthechaos.buzzsprout.com
I'd love to know what you think! If you want to get in touch with me about anything on the podcast then email nonsenseinthechaos@gmail.com or you can follow me on Instagram and Bluesky @kriyaarts or at the Nonsense in the Chaos Page on Facebook.
Please consider supporting me through patreon.com/JolieRose and like, follow, and review wherever you get your podcasts from. Share about Nonsense in the Chaos far and wide! The more people who hear about the podcast the better.
Thank you for all your support -x-
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:29):
The.
(00:53):
Welcome to The Nonsense in theChaos.
I'm your host, Jaylee Rose.
Today I'm going to beinterviewing another SARC
resident.
This one is a summer visitor.
He is like the swallows.
He appears when the weatherturns warm and then disappears
again when the weather turnscold.
When I first moved here, I said,oh, do you have any homeless
(01:15):
people who live on sarc?
And people said, yes, we haveRay.
And then from working at theMermaid Tavern, I got to know
him and I realized that that'snot the case, he is an extremely
intelligent fellow and yeah, hedid choose to sleep in a tent
before because he just likeddoing so.
(01:36):
It wasn't because he washomeless, but he's the nearest
we have to a homeless personbecause we don't, we don't have
homeless people in the Channelislands you either move here.
With a job or you are from hereand so people know you.
There might be in Jersey, butthere definitely isn't in Sark
and Gey or Albany, I would'vethought So.
(01:56):
Yeah, he's, he's our, a bit likea hobo, he's our closest thing
to a hobo.
He likes to travel around and hewould prefer to sleep in a tent
than, uh, stay in a house, whichis fair enough.
I'm definitely of the same ilkand.
Yes.
Speaking to him at the MermaidTavern over the, the last few
years, realizing just, uh, hisbrain is incredible and I feel
(02:19):
like I have managed to captureit in this interview.
He's, he's a genius and he doesmeander but it's fascinating.
It's always fascinating.
And we do adore him here onsarc.
So yes, I hope you enjoylistening to his mind Palace
that you know is Ray Howard, soon with the show.
(02:49):
Welcome to Ray.
What's your surname?
Ray Howard.
Howard, that's right.
Is that Ray Howard?
In fact, it's a, uh, it actuallyshows up in a, in a poem about
the Spanish Armad.
Does it?
My lord Howard ran off with hisships leaving Sir Richard
Grenville with one ship to facethem.
He wasn't a very brave guyabout.
(03:10):
And is he an ancestor?
Uh, not as far as I know.
Okay.
Well that's alright.
So Ray is a regular in Sark.
You've been, how long have youbeen coming to Sark?
Uh, since 11 20 11.
2011, okay.
Oh, that's not that long backthen.
So, so 10, 14 years.
Yeah.
14 years.
13 years.
13 years.
And what made you come here inthe first place?
(03:31):
I, uh, well, this friend ofmine, Stein?
Yeah.
Who is a great organizer.
Sometimes he can be a bit of asomething or rather
disciplinarian, He's really goodat organizing things.
Yeah.
And so the first time I camebecause, well, actually I came
for free because, um, I used tohelp him out in his bar.
(03:52):
He'd leave, he'd go home, takehis last bus of course, to 12.
I'd take over and close it atthree o'clock.
And since I lived in the samehouse, I didn't have any last
buses.
And, um, it, I must say thatbar.
Let's the, okay.
The craziest thing you've evercome across, and you could do
things there that you get youkicked out of anywhere.
(04:13):
where is this bar?
Uh, Oslo.
Oslo.
Okay.
And, um, yeah, so he said, well,anyone who has helped me, you
know, I, so I came along for twoweeks and so many people came
that on that occasion that, um,Stein actually had to run around
and hire another house to takethe overflow.
Oh, wow.
And, um, uh, the strange thingwas actually leaving Stark
(04:37):
because I got, uh, went toCroydon first Gatwick.
Yeah.
And um, uh, and it was Saturdayafternoon.
Walked around and okay.
You know, and then it becameSaturday evening and I got
really paranoid.
I mean, all these tallbuildings, bright lights,
horrible machines crashingaround and so many people, you
(04:58):
know, I thought there and um, Ithought, okay, it might, am I
becoming paranoid or is itculture shock?
And I talked to one of the otherguys later, Arnold, who had gone
back to Sam Molo and without anyprompting from me, without any
word from me.
He says.
I've got there.
I've got, I'm scared.
Yeah, I, I fully agree withthat.
I go to Glastonbury Festivalfrom here and I have a panic
(05:20):
attack every time with thenumber of people I can imagine.
Yeah.
So many humans.
So where are you fromoriginally?
The short version is that I wasborn in Acra Capital, city of
Ghana, a country in West Africasome people have heard of.
Yeah.
Uh, my passport says I'm Britishand I live in Oslo, which is the
capital of actually, um,contrary to popular belief in
(05:45):
Britain, not Sweden, but Norway.
Ah, I mean call a call aNorwegian of Swede.
It's like calling a ScotsmanEnglishman, you know?
Right.
They're not happy about that.
Yeah.
Nowadays, it's such a joke.
and when did you move to Oslo?
How did you end up there?
Well, uh, running around on mytravels basically, and wound up
there and, um, hung around andthought, okay, I can actually, I
(06:10):
can actually exist for sixmonths and if I find a job, I'll
stay here for a year.
Okay.
So by the time I'd finished, I'dfound a couple of part-time jobs
and et cetera, et cetera, etcetera.
And, um, then.
I went back again after thesummer and everyone says, ah, I
had had something to do with agirl.
(06:31):
And surprisingly enough, no,actually that's the standard
cliche.
And um, so I kind of, I guess Ikind of settled in somehow and
one way or another, I'm nowqualified teacher for the
Norwegian language in theNorwegian school system, which
is all very strange.
(06:52):
And, um, how many languages canyou speak?
Uh, right now, English andNorwegian.
Um, how languages, how manylanguages have I been able to
speak?
Okay.
Uh, you forget them after awhile.
Yeah, they sit on the science ofpsychology tells us we never
actually forget anything Uhhuh,but we have a very bad filing
(07:12):
system.
And, uh, okay.
Before I actually answer yourquestion in connection with
that, the.
Some researchers went to visitsome ex British servicemen in
France because, okay, welleveryone's heard of the 6th of
June, 1944.
Mm-hmm.
And they got themselves jobsvery easily.
(07:34):
It was graveyard attendant,British military graveyards.
I mean, there were quite a fewgraves and as a result of that
day Yeah.
On all site, all round.
And so they met local girls.
Yeah.
And and then stayed there.
20 years later, some researcherswent along to find out how they
were doing, discovered theycouldn't, could no longer speak
(07:55):
a word of English.
They'd lost their own languagecompletely.
Oh wow.
After 20 years, and this isn't aquite answer to your question,
but in connection with that along time ago I met a woman in.
Aba, I think it was south ofOslo.
(08:15):
And she was running a kiosk andI was with a couple of English
guys and she actually confessedthat she was actually British.
Mm.
But she couldn't speak Englishanymore.
And what had happened to her wasthat she was in Scotland and
Okay.
We perhaps we've all heard of,or have we SOEs Special
(08:36):
Operations executive, which hadlots of branches and stuff.
And uh Okay.
They were, they were the bunchthat, um, they, that destroyed
the heavy water plant.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, heroes of Telemark, there'seven a film about it.
And they were all local lads.
So they were in Scotland doingcommando training.
(08:57):
That's where she met him.
And, um, okay.
They all knew the area they werein British uniforms, but, uh,
they certainly had the advantageof local knowledge.
Anyway.
So finally, um.
She married him.
Mm-hmm.
And settled down in Berg.
Mm.
Um, just after the war and hadbeen there ever since.
(09:17):
And way back then, um, okay.
Television wasn't even aroundand until a bit later and in the
fifties there wasn't muchtelevision in England either.
It was coming and satellite TVwasn't there.
And so of course, had it beentoday, she wouldn't have lost
contact with her own language.
(09:38):
'cause so much of it comes afterthe box and it was on the tele.
Yeah.
So many so, and so many filmsand stuff.
Okay.
Getting back to that.
Um, uh, okay.
Um, German, apparently my.
Accent is very good.
Language has evaporated.
I've got talking to a Germanguy, Malaga airport, actually.
(09:58):
He asked me where, where I wasfrom in Germany.
I had to admit, wait a minute.
And my first, he asked me if Ispoke German.
Lucy wanted some, wanted sort ofassistance from me.
Yeah.
And I said, well, actually,yeah, but I, for forgotten so
much, I really can't speakanymore.
And um, I'm not quite in thelight of his last question to
me.
I'm not quite certain how heunderstood that.
(10:20):
Mm.
But um, so the accent's stillthere.
I seemed to get the grammarright.
Did you live in Germany for abit then?
Uh, I was in Germany quite a lotactually.
Uh, I had German at school andthe teachers were all German.
So, um, that, mind you, it's, itwas still, I guess school
German, you know?
Yeah.
But, uh, but the accent wasthere, the grammar was there,
(10:42):
and.
Did was a bit in Germany backand forth.
Yeah.
And uh, so apparently they toldme I could do it quite well and
I have German a little by theway, for what that's worth.
And, um, are you, um, did yougo, are you a professor at all?
You seem like you are.
(11:02):
Uh, I've heard that one beforeactually.
Um.
Actually I've been very muchinvolved in adult education.
Yeah.
I don't know if I was notexactly being a professor.
No.
As far as I know, but, um, yeah,that's a leave at that.
Okay.
Lots of details there, but, um,and, um, uh, French.
(11:27):
Yeah.
Uh, I had French at school.
Uh, lots of people have, andthey can't speak French and I'm
not quite certain that I couldeither.
But, uh, I lived for work, um, ayear in Algeria.
Mm-hmm.
And they told me I did it verywell.
Um, well, okay.
Perhaps they're being justpolite, but I seem to be able to
handle it.
Um, Spanish got Spanish a level.
Yeah.
(11:47):
Um, here we go.
Um, uh, did not have Spanish atschool, but uh, just, um, I
discovered an ancient book in,not actually in the school
library, but in a bookshelfthere.
And it was called Heath firstSpanish course.
Mm-hmm.
(12:08):
Published in 1920.
Hmm.
So it was a bit ancient.
But the language didn't seem tohave changed much I discovered.
And I thought, well, just forthe, just for the hell of it,
I'll do one exercise out of thisbook every day just for my own
amusement.
So by the time I finished, Itook a Spanish O level to
everyone's astonishment.
And it turned, I discoveredlater that that had made me a
(12:32):
bit of a talking point among theteachers.
So, uh, I discovered that muchlater.
And were you at school in Ghana?
No, in England actually.
Okay.
But my parents were hangingaround in Ghana.
And, and Nigeria.
And um, so were you sent toboarding school?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it was a very nice boardingschool.
It wasn't one of these horrible.
(12:52):
Uh, sort of military academytype things, the boot camp type
things and, okay.
Question.
Have you ever heard of a filmcalled, if it came out, I guess
in the mid sixties, I think?
No.
No, I don't.
Okay.
It's Malcolm McDowell plays init, and it's about a public
(13:13):
school and it's a bit, sort ofsurrealistic, it drifts away
from reality.
And then you suddenly realize,wait a minute, we've gone into a
fantasy world, and they discoverthe, they discover an armory
from the Second World War,probably under the, uh, under
the school stage.
(13:35):
And somehow rather, they wind uphaving a bit of a revolution.
Brilliant.
And um, and I saw it, uh,together with a guy I knew.
He asked me if I'd been to apublic school and I said, well,
no.
I certainly went to a boardingschool, but not a public school.
Mm-hmm.
In, in the, in the normal sense.
And he said, I did watching thatfilm, you have no idea what it
(13:59):
felt like.
The resentment welling up insideme.
So, um, but some people enjoyedpublic school.
Yeah.
So you enjoyed your school?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was a really, really Okayplace to be, uh, boys and girls
from six until 18.
Yeah.
Whereabouts in the country?
Was it?
East Sussex.
(14:19):
Oh, right near Su.
Yeah, SU I lived in Brighton.
Yeah.
Okay.
I, around that area.
Alright.
Okay.
East this, it's, this school isjust outside a place called a
Tin Pot place called EastGrinstead Uhhuh.
Yeah.
Which, um, which actually asurprising number of people
actually seem to have heard of,which surprises me so you seem
(14:53):
to be very interested inlanguage and history.
That's the things I've picked upfrom talking to you.
Well, my historical knowledge isvery.
Very patchy.
Certainly I'm very interested inlanguage.
In fact, see I actually studiedNorwegian at Oslo University.
Mm-hmm.
And that has to be explained abit because the system as it was
(15:15):
then.
Yep.
Things have changed.
Most many things have the, therewere no tuition fees.
There was a registration fee,which was pretty nominal.
It tended to vary between abouta pound and 10 pounds to pen, I
dunno what made it vary, butbasically registered.
And, uh, at, um, at, in, at thatpoint in time, part-time jobs
(15:40):
were growing on trees.
You know, people were crying,crying out for, um, casual labor
and stuff.
Mm-hmm.
So it was very easy.
To find a job or find a fewjobs, which didn't actually get
in the way of anything.
Mm-hmm.
And what really attracted me toit was okay.
Now there are lots of people whoare gonna think I'm mad when I
(16:03):
say this.
That's okay.
We like mad here.
Mad is fine.
And one thing.
Alright, let me, let me ask youa question if I do you, okay.
They've taken it off thesyllabus.
If I say pausing, what doesthat, does that say anything
pausing part to pause?
P-A-R-S-E.
(16:24):
Okay.
Uh, it, no.
Okay.
It used to mean, um, okay.
You can actually pause a, uh, acomputer program, which means go
through it.
And that was a new use of theword that I hadn't heard.
It meant that you Okay.
English O level.
Mm.
When they had, they had O levelsand stuff back.
In my time.
(16:45):
They've now, I think roughlyGCSEs.
Yeah.
I, I don't, I think they'reroughly the same thing.
More or less.
Yeah.
And, um, uh, the English O levellanguage, or English language O
level was actually an exam that,um, uh, that really a lots of
(17:05):
people had a lot of difficultywith.
And as far as I know, there's noEnglish language, a level.
There never was.
And okay, to get a usefulcombination of O levels, uh, you
have to have English languagemathematics, or a natural
science.
Yeah, a foreign language thatdoesn't seem to be a requirement
(17:25):
any longer.
And, you know, um, whatever elseyou could sort of clock up
basically.
Yeah.
But those three things, and theEnglish language exam was in
three parts, which, the firstpart was a piece of pausing.
Okay.
Now what does that mean?
They get, you've got a text andyou go through it.
(17:46):
You have to identify, you haveto analyze it.
What each word is doing in thesentence, what its relationship
is to all the other words.
Yeah.
So basically you start off,right, find the verb and you can
either divide the sentence upinto subject, verb and the rest
of it, or um, just subject andthe rest of it.
(18:07):
Yeah.
And then, um, identify all thebits and pieces, subordinate
clauses, what each word is doingthere.
I used to love that.
What exactly is happening in thesentence.
Yeah.
And, um.
To my mind, I have a feeling itgives some kind of insight into
something.
I dunno whether that's purelypsychological or whether it's
(18:29):
well, but do you notice it indifferent languages?
Like from talking differentlanguages?
Oh yeah.
The things that you are able toexpress in one language is
different to another.
Uh, they, the formulation isdifferent.
Yeah.
And, um, uh, we, um, and, uh,and this, okay, this was called
pausing.
Previously it had been calledconstruing, I think.
(18:51):
Okay.
Or whatever.
And in Norwegian it's calledAli, which means functional
function analysis.
Okay.
Like, what exactly is thefunction of each word?
Each phrase and the whole thing.
And, um.
Then the next bit was prey,which is a very useful skill to
have.
You get a, um, passage andyou're supposed to reduce it to
(19:14):
a certain, a given number ofwords, which they give usually
approximately a third.
Yeah.
Which, so you go through it,pick out all the different
points, um, and then yousummarize the important points.
Yeah.
And if you've got a few wordsleft over, you don't produce
padding.
You find out which is the mostimportant of the points that
(19:36):
you.
It didn't include.
Yes.
And um, that, uh, is a veryuseful skill, Uhhuh and, uh,
okay.
The prey, uh, most people managethat.
Um, the third part was an essayand well write an essay.
Yeah.
And the, um, the language bitis, um, divided into three bits.
(20:04):
The history of the language,both old and modern.
Um, the dialects.
Okay.
The dialects are very important.
The important thing is how didthey, how did they arise from
Old North?
Am I right in thinking you're anexpert in old nor?
Uh, I did, uh, that's a goodquestion.
(20:27):
I did get that reputation at onepoint.
We can't remember any of it now.
And the reason.
I got that reputation, uh, not,not deserved to my mind was
that, uh, at one point they, um,they used to have, uh, as a
(20:50):
separate exam at one point inprogression.
Mm-hmm.
And, um, it used to be oral andI thought, oh God.
Okay.
So I, I didn't, I never crammedanything.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, I just read it again andagain and again and Okay, that's
an I stem and how.
Um, how did it arise from ProtoNordic and Common Germanic and
(21:13):
the whole thing?
And so I thought just to makesure that there's nothing, no
questions when I have to, when Ihave to sort of learn it by
heart.
And when, when I had to learn itby heart, I discovered I already
knew it, just by having lookedat it.
And then do you have aphotographic memory?
Possibly?
No.
don't.
Not to mind.
Okay.
Not to my mind as far as I know.
(21:33):
Okay.
Because I learned scripts and Idefinitely couldn't just read
something and then know itafterwards.
Yeah.
No, no.
I mean, I've been sort oflooking at it for a while and
going through it.
Right.
Uh, I just sat in the lounge allby myself with these books and,
uh, coffee and went through itall.
(21:54):
For five days and learnedactually a lot, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Very peaceful, very nicesurroundings.
And, uh, back then it was anoral exam.
Normally it takes half an hour.
They had me in there for an hourand a quarter.
And, um, the, uh, so, um, you,well, you go in and you've got
(22:20):
an examiner and a sensor.
The examiner answer questions,the sensor decides which
questions are to be asked, andum, then they send you out and
they get together and discusswhat mark to give you.
Mm-hmm.
And, okay, so.
I get in there, I get presentedwith this piece of paper,
translate these, those twoverses of Al, Al means the
(22:41):
speech of the high one.
Mm-hmm.
Odin.
Okay.
It's an ed poem and you can'treally do, um, do an ed poem
unprepared unless you're a realexpert, a saga.
Um, you can actually, thevocabulary is so limited.
Um, uh, you can do it if you, ifyou've read one, you can
(23:03):
understand the rest of them,basically.
Mm-hmm.
Although you do notice adifference in style and some of
those, uh, they're quitedramatic.
And, um, so I had prepared itand, uh, went through it.
I went through the, the, the twoverses, and on the basis of
(23:24):
those two verses, they grilledme on the entire, on the, the
entire grammar.
Okay.
It's highly inflicted, um, forcases and so on.
And, and what was that and wheredoes it come from and how did
it, uh, produce, come into thatform?
And, and I thought, God, okay,so long as she sticks to the
grammar, this were some bits ofthe syllabus I hadn't read.
(23:46):
Mm.
So long as she sticks to thegrammar, I'm safe.
And, um, and she, they hammeredaway and hammered away.
And I made one blunter, whichthey let me know about
afterwards, which was, uh, okay.
All these poems are written downin the manuscript called Codex
Codex, code Codex, the, um, theRoyal.
(24:11):
Codex or whatever, which wasactually written in on I in
Iceland.
Mm-hmm.
And, um, then it was taken tothe, uh, museum in Copenhagen.
And, um, they said, okay whenwas it taken to the museum?
And I said, oh, around, um, inthe 11 hundreds.
(24:33):
That was such, such so totallywrong.
And so they said actually no, itwas 1662.
Right.
So, of course I remember thatdate.
Um, uh, okay.
They said, well, that was justtotally wrong.
It was obvious you were flickinga gear there.
And tragically the, themanuscript was destroyed in the
university fire.
(24:53):
But the contents are recorded,so.
Mm.
And, um, okay.
So I went out.
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
And then of course, usually insuch situations you will be
called back, uh, at some point.
Mm-hmm.
After they've deliberated andthey'll tell you uh, what your
(25:14):
results are.
Not that ish.
They are not merciful.
They sort of broadcast it so theentire corridor can hear it.
And I thought when that was okayfor me, because I'd actually got
an astonishing good mark.
Excellent.
And, um, uh, that's how I gotthat reputation.
Yeah.
Got a reputation being, um, the,an expert, um, the secretaries
(25:37):
in the records departmentactually knew who I was, which
was interesting.
And, um, they said, yeah, well,with a name like yours and those
kind of marks, you're going,you're going to be remembered.
Okay.
That's nice.
Not all my marks were thatbrilliant, but those were, and,
um, so yeah.
(25:59):
And so for, for a while, but ifyou don't use it, I mean, it
disappears.
I'm pretty hopeless.
Yeah.
And um, yeah, we've run into abackwater.
No, that's right.
Well, this is a good opportunityfor us to pull a ring.
(26:25):
If you enjoy this podcast, thenplease consider supporting me at
patreon.com/joly Rose.
This is something that Iabsolutely love doing, making
this podcast, and it's the waythat I've figured out to create
an audience and a platform forme to express myself as an
artist from the limitations ofliving on a rock in the middle
(26:48):
of nowhere.
And.
I love limitations.
I think it's key to the creativeprocess.
It's something that I've oftenworked with, even when I had the
freedom of living in Brightonand being in the UK and having
access to vast numbers of peopleand the ability to travel around
the place and go to differentvenues and be in the world of
the arts and take shows toEdinburgh.
(27:10):
I still like to put limitationson the work that I did because I
feel like when there's too muchchoice, it's.
It's kind of overwhelming.
So I do feel like.
There's something quiteinspiring and beneficial about
the limitation that I have ofbeing on this small island.
I, it doesn't paralyze me orfill me with dread or fear.
It fills me with the excitementof, okay, well then what can I
(27:31):
do?
I can write books and I can makepodcasts, and that's what I'm
doing.
That's what I'm creating from myLittle Rock.
And I love it and put onfestivals.
So yeah, it's working with whatyou've got and limitations
actually make you focus becauseyes, something about being in
Brighton and having all theoptions in the universe means
that it can be quiteoverwhelming.
(27:52):
So I have some creativeofferings that are coming up
that.
You are welcome to come and joinin with.
So I'm gonna be openingBoomTown, which is very
exciting.
I'm gonna be on the Lions gatestage as part of the opening
ceremony.
And then we have a venue calledLa Luna Coven, which is in Old
Town.
So if anyone's gonna be atBoomTown and wants to come along
and say hello, please do.
That'd be lovely.
(28:12):
I'll also be at Kentwell Hall inSuffolk, uh, in August after
Beam Town.
For, uh, a week dressing astutors.
So if you live in Suffolk, I'mfancy coming along to Kentwell
Hall, then you can come and seeus performing as the Mamas at
Kent Royal's reenactment inAugust.
Also we are gonna be walking apilgrimage across the uk,
(28:33):
September to October.
And if you go on my socialmedia, which is Korea Arts,
K-R-I-Y-A-A-R-T-S, and that's onFacebook and Instagram.
I've put the dates up for wherewe're walking and when.
And so you can have a look atthat and see if you are in the
area.
So if you would be interested inus coming along and performing
for you, or if you want to feedus or if you want to, um, how us
(28:55):
for the night, or if you'refancy coming and walking with us
for a day or two, get in touchand let me know there's also my
book's gonna be coming out atthe end of the year, which is
called Walking with Autumn.
And it'd be great if peoplecould pre-sale order it because
pre-sales are everything.
So I will be launching that as acrowdfunder soon for people to
be able to.
(29:16):
Get those early purchases in,and you'll be able to choose
whether you get just that bookor if you get a collection of
all my books signed and if youget'em in hardcover, et cetera,
and all the money will gotowards paying for an
illustrator and just finishingthe last bits of the book off.
And last but not least, it isthe British Podcast Awards and
(29:37):
there is the.
Listeners choice, so if youenjoy this podcast, please go
and vote for it at the Britishpodcast awards.com/vote type
nonsense.
In the chaos, click vote.
Reply to the confirmation email.
It's as easy as that.
And just, yeah, let's get, getan award for this podcast.
That would be amazing.
(29:57):
So if you enjoy it, please do dothat and share that you've done
it with people and let peopleknow that you are supporting
this podcast.
So thank you ever so much.
And now on with the show.
(30:23):
So you know about rings, we'vechatted about rings before.
Yeah.
I said to you, the reason why wedo this is for an element of not
the nonsense and the chaos.
So it's letting the universelead.
And then you said somethinginteresting, which is, is the
universe chaos?
So what's your thoughts on that?
What's your thoughts on whetherthe universe is chaos or not?
Well, um, well I, Einsteinactually rejected the quantum
(30:50):
theory to begin with.
I dunno quite what he know, whathe did at the end.
Um, okay.
Einstein is the very famousfather of theory, of relativity,
as most of us know.
Yeah.
Even if we anything aboutrelativity.
And he said God does not playdice with the universe.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
(31:10):
Things are very systematic andthey follow certain rules and
things happen and so on.
But the thing with, um, quantummechanics is that.
Things seem to be, uh, can getvery random.
You don't even know what's goingto happen.
And this good old professor, heHeisenberg with, um, his
(31:31):
uncertainty theory and poor, um,that poor theory, it's been
being used to justify so manythings.
Mm-hmm.
Um, there's a, a ratherinteresting physics experiment
actually, that you send a streamof electrons through this metal
(31:52):
plate with two slits in it.
Yes.
And yeah, you get this aninterference pattern as though
you were sending night through.
Mm-hmm.
And.
So wait a minute.
This means that the electronmust have gone through both
slits for there to be aninterference pattern.
This is a wave patternassociated mm-hmm.
(32:13):
With, um, with the electron.
And how can the electron havegone through both slits?
Yeah.
This is a matter of, um, sortof, people say, well, perhaps
the wave pattern went throughboth slips, but the electron
didn't.
And, um, no one's been very goodat explaining this.
And the strange thing is, and Idon't know quite how it's done,
(32:36):
that if you photograph the, um,photographically, you can
actually discover which slip theelectron went through.
If you do that.
You don't get the interferencepattern.
Which means that there is nosuch thing as an impartial
observer.
So this means that our, uh, ourunderstanding of what happens
(33:01):
stops the phenomenon occurring.
Mm.
And that is very weird.
Yeah.
And someone, someone else hasmodified the, the, the model
saying the electron goes throughone, one slip, then it goes back
again and goes through the, theother slit and said, well,
actually it's, it's just amodel.
Who knows?
Yeah.
What exactly happens?
(33:23):
And Einstein, because of thisrandomness, um, he, uh, he said,
oh, it's all got to do withhidden variables.
It's not really random.
So yeah, we don't know.
I always think that it's, it islike to do with scale.
So on one scale.
Things fit with certain rules,but then on another scale they
(33:46):
don't.
And it's almost like the more infocus as in this scale, things
are, the more it fits the rulesthat we know.
Yeah.
But the further out you go andthe further in you go, the less
it behaves.
On the other hand, um, uh Okay.
On a, on, on a macro level,things happen on a micro level,
(34:06):
things are a bit different.
Yeah.
Which is roughly what you said.
Yeah.
And actually theoreticalphysics, is Okay.
Very much.
Very much magical magic in areal technical sense.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Well have you define ic.
The theoretical idea of magic isthat you you manipulate the
(34:30):
reality behind the illusion thatwe experience.
Yeah.
In a way, by doing things tothe, the real reality behind it,
you will have an effect on whathappens in our illusory world.
And so very often people whopractice magic like Kalari
(34:51):
mm-hmm.
Um, in Nigeria, they, uh.
They will do, perform some, uh,some ritual, and if it doesn't
work, of course, then they'llhave a built-in explanation for
failure.
Yes.
Like, you know, crocodile motherhad a bad day or something.
You know, you never know.
But the ideas there I, I there'scome up a couple of times in
(35:15):
podcasts, uh, where I've hadconversation with people and
actually one of them was afriend whose, um, partner had
died and she saw him in a dream.
And, um, she said to him like,what's it like?
And he said, well, it's a lotmore organized than you'd
imagine.
Yeah.
And that's how I feel is that itseems like chaos to us because
we don't understand it.
But actually, if you understandit, then it's not chaos, but we,
(35:36):
you know it, whether we'll everget to that point.
So you are then with knowledgeof the reality behind our
illusion, which we can onlyunderstand in terms of
mathematical equations, um,allows us to make things happen
(35:56):
in our illusory world.
I mean, most of this table seemspretty solid to us, but actually
most of it's mostly empty space.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is great.
I love it.
Um, brilliant.
So if you pull a rain Alright.
And then that will, um, inspirewhat we're gonna talk about.
Okay.
And do you know the res?
Yep.
That's LI don't know the namesof them.
No, but, but that's the L ruin.
(36:17):
Yes.
Lagals.
And it's the water.
It's the RO of water.
Okay.
And so we are on an island inthe sea.
So what made you keep comingback to Sark?
You came here, you've beencoming here for 11 years.
What is it you love about theplace?
Yeah, I like it.
Yeah.
That's it.
I like it here.
And when I get here, I think.
Ugh.
(36:38):
Yeah.
A sort sigh of relief somehow.
Yeah.
And of course the first time Iwas here, there was this girl,
ter, who um, she sort of lookedaround and said, Toki must have
been here.
This is just like the Shire.
And I thought, Hmm, okay.
And one thing, the first time Iwas here, there were, okay, the
(36:58):
first, was it the first evening?
I think the first evening I wasup at the mermaid here.
And, um, actually on the wayback got lost because I missed
the turning.
And because of course no streetlamps, okay, I did actually have
illumination, not that I wasusing it.
And I thought, okay, wait aminute.
(37:19):
I dunno quite where I am.
And at that, uh, at that point,there was one thing that looked
like could be a street lamp, andthat was the pub sign at the
mermaid.
Okay.
So I managed to find that,right.
Let's start again.
And, um, and then I didn't missthe turning and I managed to
find my way.
But, uh, that was, um, how thefirst time, okay, how do I, how
(37:42):
do I know where Mermaid, how doI know where Mermaid Lane is?
At the top of Mermaid La Lane inRuca, uh, on the.
Left hand side coming from themm-hmm.
The was, there used to be what Iused to call the pixie
sculpture.
I don't know if you rememberthat.
No.
No.
And it was a sculpture which wasrather active.
(38:06):
It was made of metal, iron steelor something.
And, um, it was move it mo ithad moving parts and it had toad
stools.
Hmm.
You know, fly ic ones, you know,red ones with white spots made
of iron and orchid things.
And water came down and.
(38:27):
Went into the container, alittle hole at the bottom, lets
water out.
But obviously water went outmore slowly than it came in.
So when the container got full,it then tipped over and there
was a sort of, um, stalk with alittle ball at the end, which
then hit one.
(38:47):
The mushroom is relevant,mushroom went bing or bong and
wow.
And, uh, and you had, and therewere quite a few of these just
going.
And so you got, I guess the, themelody or whatever, it did
repeat itself at some pointbecause it was quite regular,
but it didn't seem very regularbecause these things were.
(39:08):
Just pinging and ping, um,hitting, hitting the toad stools
with different, um, oh, thatsounds really cool.
And I think they then, I thinkthey turned it off because some
neighbor was complaining and I'mnot surprised.
Yeah.
And then it's not there anymore,you know?
I think that's very tragic.
Yeah.
And um, so that's one, uh, thatwas one of the things that
(39:30):
struck me.
And, um, has it changed much?
Is there anything noticeablychanged?
Uh, changed?
Um, smoke, uh, not allowed tosmoke in pubs anymore.
No.
Able to do that.
Uh, what else has changed?
Um, electric, uh, when I firstcame there was a public, uh,
(39:51):
there was a pubs illuminated pubsign.
Yeah.
And the pub sign got blown away.
And, uh, what else has changed?
Yeah.
Um, no motor vehicles wereallowed, privately owned, except
Okay.
The night of Sark, the same yearhe's allowed to have a private
motor vehicle.
Mm-hmm.
(40:11):
Okay.
And as you know, tractors arearound, but there are very
definite rules about what you'reallowed to do with them and
everything.
And, um, which can be bent.
I mean that the bus service isnot really allowed by law, but
it's kind of necessary.
So it's a lot.
Yeah.
And, um, you could have have youread much of the law?
(40:32):
No.
You just sort of know free.
Yeah.
Just from what you've heard.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was wondering whether youcould, uh, read Norman French
then?
Uh, I managed to I thought,okay, I can, I can under this is
very odd French, very strange.
And I can understand what iswritten here.
God knows how it pronounced,how, you know, how it's
pronounced, but I can, can workout what it's, what it actually
(40:57):
is saying.
Okay.
So, uh, man, I manage that one.
But can you, so can yourecognize Sarkis at all when you
see the, the Patois?
Is it there isn't any relationto that and Norse?
No.
Well, actually I don't know muchin the way of Patois.
MI know that one.
Mm-hmm.
That's, and, um, that's aboutthe only one, only bit of ua.
(41:18):
I know, actually, I think uhbecause it wasn't written down
as a language, it was an orallanguage.
So you don't Yeah.
There aren't sort of manuscriptsthat are around or anything like
that.
I heard, I heard that someonehas actually codified it.
Yes.
The, a guy called Martin did dothat.
And is it still okay for alanguage to be called living?
There have to be two stillliving people who speak it,
(41:41):
there are still two.
There are still two.
There were only two left.
Yeah.
All right.
One isn't enough then beingused.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
We are trying, I mean, there,there has been, he has, um,
recorded it and has taught someof it to the school children and
uh, yeah.
So it's barely living.
But yeah, it would be sad tolose it.
(42:02):
It would be a shame, but we'dneed people to learn it.
It might be a good idea towrite, write stories in it.
Yeah.
Children's stories of whatever.
Yeah.
It's very difficult to getpeople to learn it.
When it's so unused.
Yes.
You know, the yeah.
And also what's the point?
'cause in a way, should we learnFrench, you know, and that would
be a bit more useful.
(42:22):
Right.
So it's that thing of, but it's,but also it'd be really sad for
it to be lost, but it is prettymuch lost.
Do you feel like you are, um,from anywhere, rooted anywhere,
or do you feel like you're sortof a, sorry, do you feel like
you're from somewhere or do youfeel like you're a person of
world?
Um, yeah.
When I say Pete, where are youfrom?
I have really real difficultytrying to answer that question,
(42:44):
so I'm not quite certain.
Uh, uh, where do you feel mostat home or most belonging?
Well, actually at the moment,um.
Norway, Oslo, I suppose.
Yeah.
I don't know.
And I seem to sort of blend inwith the local population as,
uh, actually in Mar in 1991.
(43:05):
This is kind of funny.
Uh, I was a witness in a courtcase, and it was my job to
explain to the court how theaccused and the interrogator had
managed to misunderstand eachother completely without either
of them understanding.
There had been amisunderstanding so basically
(43:26):
the, the accused had managed tosign a statement which he had
done without a lawyer and youcan withdraw your statement.
Um, not always a good ideabecause it doesn't do good
things for credibility.
But he didn't withdraw hisstatement.
He just said, but that is notwhat I said.
Yes, but this is your name,written by you.
(43:46):
And so, in spite of the factthat the statement had been read
back to him or read out to himclearly and loud, loud and
clear.
Mm.
He still had not understood whatwas there.
Right.
And uh, this caused a certainamount of confusion.
So I wound up, I actually knewthe guy, so I knew quite a lot
(44:10):
about his, let's say, languageshortcomings, right.
And also with my background, Iknew a bit about language and
how, how language works.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, the defender said, heldup the statement and says, Mr.
Okay, the best translation isdeputy sheriff.
But these things are verydifficult to translate anyway,
(44:33):
so Deputy Sheriff Gundersonsays, this is the truth.
What do you, uh, regards thisas?
Reality?
What do you say to that?
So poor Mr.
Gunderson.
Okay.
So, um, uh, and explained how,because of the the explained
that the accused had, quote,insufficiently or, uh,
(44:56):
insufficiently, is that the wordthat I used?
Unusually?
Yeah.
I can't remember the first word.
Let's say insufficiently orunusually or un normally well
developed general lingualskills.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
And explained with examples thateveryone could understand from
(45:17):
everyday life, how suchmisunderstandings could, um, in
the case of this person couldtake place.
Mm-hmm.
And then, okay.
That seems, and the.
The, the defen, the defenselawyer said afterwards, that was
extremely clear.
And I said, well, perhaps Ididn't say enough.
He said, oh, you said exactlyenough.
(45:37):
You stop exactly when youshould.
Exactly.
That was excellent.
And um, so the prosecutor getsup and starts asking me a couple
of stupid questions just to getthe ball rolling and, oh God.
Then he asked me two questionsin one, and I thought, okay,
come on.
(45:58):
Yeah.
Because, but he, he, the, whenyou get these two questions, get
them both explicit.
Yeah.
Any order you like or theuttermost appropriate in the
situation, and that each onehave its own separate.
Correct answer.
Yeah, that's the point.
And he, I said, get on with it.
(46:20):
And okay, so if you, if you aska normal witness this, they
might get stuck.
Ask a normal expert witness,they might get stuck like that
character did.
Yeah.
But I couldn't understand whythe hell he got stuck on it.
But, and um, but if you ask thatsort of question to someone who
is supposed to be an expert withabout linguistic things, you're
(46:44):
like, wow, come on.
Kidding.
And so I said, oh yeah, okay.
And very politely, do you mean,and for the life of me, I can't
remember what he asked me.
I've been kicking myself eversince.
Do you mean this or a or do youmean.
B.
Okay.
(47:05):
Okay.
They're now both explicit.
Mm.
And then he says, just answerthe question please.
Okay.
This sudden change of manner.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's a normal piece ofmanipulative, rubbish.
And what he actually meant wassay yes or no.
Now, if he had said, just sayyes or no, I would've appealed
to the judge and said, yourHonor, I can't answer this
(47:27):
question.
It's a half truth.
Yeah.
And I have promised on my honorand my consciousness to tell the
whole truth, the, um, uh, thetruth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth.
All right.
So if the court was to releaseme from my promise, I'll answer
the question.
Yeah.
But, um, I can't answer thequestion without breaking my
(47:48):
promise to the court.
Yeah.
Okay.
That would've blocked that one.
Mm-hmm.
But he didn't, he said, justanswer the question please.
And he's expecting.
A yes or a no, I mean, whatever.
And I said, well, well certainlythat's what I'm here for, very
politely.
And, um, um, and as the first,uh, step in the process we have
to which of the two possiblequestions you would like an
(48:10):
answer to.
And so, and I say the answer tothe first question, and I'm
going to answer the ex, theimplicit one first of course.
'cause he can cut me off at anytime.
Mm-hmm.
And he sees, where's it go,where it's going, no further
questions.
Mm.
And turns round and goes to sitdown.
And so I say to his back, very,sort of in a very fatherly
(48:35):
fashion, but didn't, uh, didn'tyou want an answer to your
question?
And he didn't answer.
And the judge had to step in andsaid, it doesn't look like it.
So the jury started laughing andwhat the manipulation becomes
visible.
When it doesn't work.
Yes.
When it works, it's prettyinvisible.
Yeah.
When it doesn't work, it sort ofbecomes very invisible.
(48:56):
I love that.
That's what sort of a kind ofmagic is, is that the Yeah.
The, the behind the scenesmechanics of what's actually
happening once you understandthe matrix.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's really cool.
Well, actually, that brings thesong perfectly to the Chaos
Crusade.
(49:19):
Alright.
Because that's what the ChaosCrusade is, is something that
you would suggest to listenersto try out, that helps them
break the matrix.
I mean, maybe learning a bitabout linguistics sounds like
quite a good thing, but anythingyou'd suggest to help break the
matrix for someone to, don'twhatever in Okay.
In confrontation with amanipulator, keep calm.
(49:43):
Okay.
If you're going to get angry.
Make sure you know what you'redoing first.
Mm-hmm.
Don't answer spontaneously.
Would it be a good idea to getangry now?
And if the answer is yes,because sometimes, you know, a
sort of piece, a blast, uh, go,um, may actually suddenly do the
(50:03):
trick mm-hmm.
Can get rocked back.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and they may be implyingsomething.
Okay.
Let them make it explicit beforeyou relate to it.
And in this, yeah, in thiscontext, it's right.
Ironically.
Uh, a few months later I wasactually arrested myself and it
(50:25):
was a very, very minor matter bythe time we'd and I never denied
it.
Um, by the time we'd finishedmy, I was sentenced to 14 days
suspended.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Which is the mildest penalty forwhich Norwegian law makes
permission, makes, um,provision.
Okay.
(50:45):
So obviously I hadn't tried toshoot the king or anything.
Mm-hmm.
An extremely minor matter.
And then the, the interrogatorI.
Uh, I was arrested on that.
Important Sunday evening.
Okay.
Okay.
At, uh, nine o'clock.
I remember that.
And, okay.
So, um, and then we'd begin 12hours later.
(51:08):
Okay.
Wind up in a cell.
Yes.
Okay.
Then I get breakfast, right?
Half past eight.
Yes.
No milk and sugar for thecoffee.
Uh, okay, nevermind.
And, um, then he I'm collectedby the interrogator who starts
off being very, um, veryfriendly and everything and
offers me a cigarette that won'thappen these days, but then,
(51:30):
and, um, et cetera, et cetera,et cetera.
And then starts asking me alittle bit about my life story.
I'm not gonna tell him.
Mm.
Um, okay.
This character was a totalnarcissist because, um, none of
my life story had not, nothingto do with anything.
If he was trying to extract fromme tactically important
(51:52):
information, then I would'veunderstand.
Understood.
But, uh, he was just basicallytrying to, uh, he was just a
control freak and, you know, hisidea seemed to be, well, I can
get anything out of anyone, uh,more or less.
And, and so I, I was very politeto him and, uh, I said, no, I
(52:15):
think we'll stick to therealities of the case.
Okay.
Any sensible police officerwould just have said, right.
You go along with this.
Yes.
Sign here please.
Yes.
Five minutes.
Okay.
You'll be hearing from us.
Okay.
I'm probably gonna get a fine,couple of hundred quid or
something.
Little Very irritating, but notvery crippling.
Mm-hmm.
And, um.
(52:35):
And that would've been it, butnot this character.
He just carried on all day.
I okay.
And so he says, yam, you can,uh, confess to that.
Yes.
Right?
And, and then he asked me aboutmy past.
No.
I think we'll stick.
Are you gonna make a statement,aren't you?
Because I, we've discussed thisbefore.
I say yes.
(52:55):
And leave it there.
'cause the word statement seemsto have changed meaning?
Yes.
And he's trying to, trying torattle me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, come on.
Just follow carefully what hesays.
um, give them an answer toexactly what they've said, not
what you think they meant.
If it's forget implications.
Mm-hmm.
You can relate to implicationsif you like, but on the whole,
(53:18):
just listen very carefully towhat they've said and answer.
Uh, give them an answer to whatthey've said.
So that was Ray Howard.
What a fascinating man.
It was such a joy to get to knowhim better and to really be
observing the way his mind worksbecause I've sat and chat to him
(53:39):
for hours at the pub, and we'vetalked about runes.
He told me loads of amazingstuff about runes.
Apparently the like places whereruins are written, which is on
stones in Norway, and, uh.
Sweden and places, you know, inthe Nordic countries, they're
written so they're not seen.
(54:00):
So they're written on the baseof rocks that are then upside
down.
So apparently they're not meantto be seen.
They're not meant to see thelight of day, which I just
thought was fascinating and.
He just is one of those peopleyou could talk to forever and
record everything he says andyou will constantly be surprised
and inspired and taken on ajourney by his conversations.
(54:23):
He knows so much, but he's.
Yeah, I mean obviously when theolder you get, the more, there's
just so many corridors to hismind, palace that you feel like
you are lo you're gonna be lost.
You know, it's like a maze.
But he does always find his wayback to the beginning of what he
was talking about, which isquite amazing.
Sometimes it can be an hourbefore he gets back to the start
(54:44):
of what he was talking about,but he does manage it, which is
always very impressive andthere's just so much in there.
So, yeah, I'm.
Pleased to have captured asnippet of some of ray's in a
world and to have seen a littlebit of the mechanics of how his
brain works and what it is thatinspires him and where it all
comes from.
And yeah, the, the rules andthe, the linguistics and grammar
(55:07):
behind language, just, it wasinteresting to see it through
his eyes and how.
It tells us so much more truthabout the world than what we
the, the content of what we'resaying.
'cause the content of what we'resaying is masking, and it's what
we work with in fooling.
You know, there's all the stuffthat we say that's pleasantries
and that's polite.
But within a split second, weread someone straight away.
(55:31):
You know, as soon as you walk onthe stage, people read you.
And the fool's job is to.
Be that is to be that honestthing, to admit the thing that
you are, that people can seerather than shielding it or
masking it.
And then to invite the audienceto do the same so that we can
all just be ourselves and bethe, the real being behind the
(55:51):
mask of the words that we use orthe image that we present.
So fascinating stuff and it wasso lovely to chat to.
Wonderful Ray and yeah, thankyou ever so much for being here,
as always, and I shall see youagain next week.
So see the norm.
The.
(00:53):
Welcome to The Nonsense in theChaos.
I'm your host, Jaylee Rose.
Today I'm going to beinterviewing another SARC
resident.
This one is a summer visitor.
He is like the swallows.
He appears when the weatherturns warm and then disappears
again when the weather turnscold.
When I first moved here, I said,oh, do you have any homeless
(01:15):
people who live on sarc?
And people said, yes, we haveRay.
And then from working at theMermaid Tavern, I got to know
him and I realized that that'snot the case, he is an extremely
intelligent fellow and yeah, hedid choose to sleep in a tent
before because he just likeddoing so.
(01:36):
It wasn't because he washomeless, but he's the nearest
we have to a homeless personbecause we don't, we don't have
homeless people in the Channelislands you either move here.
With a job or you are from hereand so people know you.
There might be in Jersey, butthere definitely isn't in Sark
and Gey or Albany, I would'vethought So.
(01:56):
Yeah, he's, he's our, a bit likea hobo, he's our closest thing
to a hobo.
He likes to travel around and hewould prefer to sleep in a tent
than, uh, stay in a house, whichis fair enough.
I'm definitely of the same ilkand.
Yes.
Speaking to him at the MermaidTavern over the, the last few
years, realizing just, uh, hisbrain is incredible and I feel
(02:19):
like I have managed to captureit in this interview.
He's, he's a genius and he doesmeander but it's fascinating.
It's always fascinating.
And we do adore him here onsarc.
So yes, I hope you enjoylistening to his mind Palace
that you know is Ray Howard, soon with the show.
(02:49):
Welcome to Ray.
What's your surname?
Ray Howard.
Howard, that's right.
Is that Ray Howard?
In fact, it's a, uh, it actuallyshows up in a, in a poem about
the Spanish Armad.
Does it?
My lord Howard ran off with hisships leaving Sir Richard
Grenville with one ship to facethem.
He wasn't a very brave guyabout.
(03:10):
And is he an ancestor?
Uh, not as far as I know.
Okay.
Well that's alright.
So Ray is a regular in Sark.
You've been, how long have youbeen coming to Sark?
Uh, since 11 20 11.
2011, okay.
Oh, that's not that long backthen.
So, so 10, 14 years.
Yeah.
14 years.
13 years.
13 years.
And what made you come here inthe first place?
(03:31):
I, uh, well, this friend ofmine, Stein?
Yeah.
Who is a great organizer.
Sometimes he can be a bit of asomething or rather
disciplinarian, He's really goodat organizing things.
Yeah.
And so the first time I camebecause, well, actually I came
for free because, um, I used tohelp him out in his bar.
(03:52):
He'd leave, he'd go home, takehis last bus of course, to 12.
I'd take over and close it atthree o'clock.
And since I lived in the samehouse, I didn't have any last
buses.
And, um, it, I must say thatbar.
Let's the, okay.
The craziest thing you've evercome across, and you could do
things there that you get youkicked out of anywhere.
(04:13):
where is this bar?
Uh, Oslo.
Oslo.
Okay.
And, um, yeah, so he said, well,anyone who has helped me, you
know, I, so I came along for twoweeks and so many people came
that on that occasion that, um,Stein actually had to run around
and hire another house to takethe overflow.
Oh, wow.
And, um, uh, the strange thingwas actually leaving Stark
(04:37):
because I got, uh, went toCroydon first Gatwick.
Yeah.
And um, uh, and it was Saturdayafternoon.
Walked around and okay.
You know, and then it becameSaturday evening and I got
really paranoid.
I mean, all these tallbuildings, bright lights,
horrible machines crashingaround and so many people, you
(04:58):
know, I thought there and um, Ithought, okay, it might, am I
becoming paranoid or is itculture shock?
And I talked to one of the otherguys later, Arnold, who had gone
back to Sam Molo and without anyprompting from me, without any
word from me.
He says.
I've got there.
I've got, I'm scared.
Yeah, I, I fully agree withthat.
I go to Glastonbury Festivalfrom here and I have a panic
(05:20):
attack every time with thenumber of people I can imagine.
Yeah.
So many humans.
So where are you fromoriginally?
The short version is that I wasborn in Acra Capital, city of
Ghana, a country in West Africasome people have heard of.
Yeah.
Uh, my passport says I'm Britishand I live in Oslo, which is the
capital of actually, um,contrary to popular belief in
(05:45):
Britain, not Sweden, but Norway.
Ah, I mean call a call aNorwegian of Swede.
It's like calling a ScotsmanEnglishman, you know?
Right.
They're not happy about that.
Yeah.
Nowadays, it's such a joke.
and when did you move to Oslo?
How did you end up there?
Well, uh, running around on mytravels basically, and wound up
there and, um, hung around andthought, okay, I can actually, I
(06:10):
can actually exist for sixmonths and if I find a job, I'll
stay here for a year.
Okay.
So by the time I'd finished, I'dfound a couple of part-time jobs
and et cetera, et cetera, etcetera.
And, um, then.
I went back again after thesummer and everyone says, ah, I
had had something to do with agirl.
(06:31):
And surprisingly enough, no,actually that's the standard
cliche.
And um, so I kind of, I guess Ikind of settled in somehow and
one way or another, I'm nowqualified teacher for the
Norwegian language in theNorwegian school system, which
is all very strange.
(06:52):
And, um, how many languages canyou speak?
Uh, right now, English andNorwegian.
Um, how languages, how manylanguages have I been able to
speak?
Okay.
Uh, you forget them after awhile.
Yeah, they sit on the science ofpsychology tells us we never
actually forget anything Uhhuh,but we have a very bad filing
(07:12):
system.
And, uh, okay.
Before I actually answer yourquestion in connection with
that, the.
Some researchers went to visitsome ex British servicemen in
France because, okay, welleveryone's heard of the 6th of
June, 1944.
Mm-hmm.
And they got themselves jobsvery easily.
(07:34):
It was graveyard attendant,British military graveyards.
I mean, there were quite a fewgraves and as a result of that
day Yeah.
On all site, all round.
And so they met local girls.
Yeah.
And and then stayed there.
20 years later, some researcherswent along to find out how they
were doing, discovered theycouldn't, could no longer speak
(07:55):
a word of English.
They'd lost their own languagecompletely.
Oh wow.
After 20 years, and this isn't aquite answer to your question,
but in connection with that along time ago I met a woman in.
Aba, I think it was south ofOslo.
(08:15):
And she was running a kiosk andI was with a couple of English
guys and she actually confessedthat she was actually British.
Mm.
But she couldn't speak Englishanymore.
And what had happened to her wasthat she was in Scotland and
Okay.
We perhaps we've all heard of,or have we SOEs Special
(08:36):
Operations executive, which hadlots of branches and stuff.
And uh Okay.
They were, they were the bunchthat, um, they, that destroyed
the heavy water plant.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, heroes of Telemark, there'seven a film about it.
And they were all local lads.
So they were in Scotland doingcommando training.
(08:57):
That's where she met him.
And, um, okay.
They all knew the area they werein British uniforms, but, uh,
they certainly had the advantageof local knowledge.
Anyway.
So finally, um.
She married him.
Mm-hmm.
And settled down in Berg.
Mm.
Um, just after the war and hadbeen there ever since.
(09:17):
And way back then, um, okay.
Television wasn't even aroundand until a bit later and in the
fifties there wasn't muchtelevision in England either.
It was coming and satellite TVwasn't there.
And so of course, had it beentoday, she wouldn't have lost
contact with her own language.
(09:38):
'cause so much of it comes afterthe box and it was on the tele.
Yeah.
So many so, and so many filmsand stuff.
Okay.
Getting back to that.
Um, uh, okay.
Um, German, apparently my.
Accent is very good.
Language has evaporated.
I've got talking to a Germanguy, Malaga airport, actually.
(09:58):
He asked me where, where I wasfrom in Germany.
I had to admit, wait a minute.
And my first, he asked me if Ispoke German.
Lucy wanted some, wanted sort ofassistance from me.
Yeah.
And I said, well, actually,yeah, but I, for forgotten so
much, I really can't speakanymore.
And um, I'm not quite in thelight of his last question to
me.
I'm not quite certain how heunderstood that.
(10:20):
Mm.
But um, so the accent's stillthere.
I seemed to get the grammarright.
Did you live in Germany for abit then?
Uh, I was in Germany quite a lotactually.
Uh, I had German at school andthe teachers were all German.
So, um, that, mind you, it's, itwas still, I guess school
German, you know?
Yeah.
But, uh, but the accent wasthere, the grammar was there,
(10:42):
and.
Did was a bit in Germany backand forth.
Yeah.
And uh, so apparently they toldme I could do it quite well and
I have German a little by theway, for what that's worth.
And, um, are you, um, did yougo, are you a professor at all?
You seem like you are.
(11:02):
Uh, I've heard that one beforeactually.
Um.
Actually I've been very muchinvolved in adult education.
Yeah.
I don't know if I was notexactly being a professor.
No.
As far as I know, but, um, yeah,that's a leave at that.
Okay.
Lots of details there, but, um,and, um, uh, French.
(11:27):
Yeah.
Uh, I had French at school.
Uh, lots of people have, andthey can't speak French and I'm
not quite certain that I couldeither.
But, uh, I lived for work, um, ayear in Algeria.
Mm-hmm.
And they told me I did it verywell.
Um, well, okay.
Perhaps they're being justpolite, but I seem to be able to
handle it.
Um, Spanish got Spanish a level.
Yeah.
(11:47):
Um, here we go.
Um, uh, did not have Spanish atschool, but uh, just, um, I
discovered an ancient book in,not actually in the school
library, but in a bookshelfthere.
And it was called Heath firstSpanish course.
Mm-hmm.
(12:08):
Published in 1920.
Hmm.
So it was a bit ancient.
But the language didn't seem tohave changed much I discovered.
And I thought, well, just forthe, just for the hell of it,
I'll do one exercise out of thisbook every day just for my own
amusement.
So by the time I finished, Itook a Spanish O level to
everyone's astonishment.
And it turned, I discoveredlater that that had made me a
(12:32):
bit of a talking point among theteachers.
So, uh, I discovered that muchlater.
And were you at school in Ghana?
No, in England actually.
Okay.
But my parents were hangingaround in Ghana.
And, and Nigeria.
And um, so were you sent toboarding school?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it was a very nice boardingschool.
It wasn't one of these horrible.
(12:52):
Uh, sort of military academytype things, the boot camp type
things and, okay.
Question.
Have you ever heard of a filmcalled, if it came out, I guess
in the mid sixties, I think?
No.
No, I don't.
Okay.
It's Malcolm McDowell plays init, and it's about a public
(13:13):
school and it's a bit, sort ofsurrealistic, it drifts away
from reality.
And then you suddenly realize,wait a minute, we've gone into a
fantasy world, and they discoverthe, they discover an armory
from the Second World War,probably under the, uh, under
the school stage.
(13:35):
And somehow rather, they wind uphaving a bit of a revolution.
Brilliant.
And um, and I saw it, uh,together with a guy I knew.
He asked me if I'd been to apublic school and I said, well,
no.
I certainly went to a boardingschool, but not a public school.
Mm-hmm.
In, in the, in the normal sense.
And he said, I did watching thatfilm, you have no idea what it
(13:59):
felt like.
The resentment welling up insideme.
So, um, but some people enjoyedpublic school.
Yeah.
So you enjoyed your school?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was a really, really Okayplace to be, uh, boys and girls
from six until 18.
Yeah.
Whereabouts in the country?
Was it?
East Sussex.
(14:19):
Oh, right near Su.
Yeah, SU I lived in Brighton.
Yeah.
Okay.
I, around that area.
Alright.
Okay.
East this, it's, this school isjust outside a place called a
Tin Pot place called EastGrinstead Uhhuh.
Yeah.
Which, um, which actually asurprising number of people
actually seem to have heard of,which surprises me so you seem
(14:53):
to be very interested inlanguage and history.
That's the things I've picked upfrom talking to you.
Well, my historical knowledge isvery.
Very patchy.
Certainly I'm very interested inlanguage.
In fact, see I actually studiedNorwegian at Oslo University.
Mm-hmm.
And that has to be explained abit because the system as it was
(15:15):
then.
Yep.
Things have changed.
Most many things have the, therewere no tuition fees.
There was a registration fee,which was pretty nominal.
It tended to vary between abouta pound and 10 pounds to pen, I
dunno what made it vary, butbasically registered.
And, uh, at, um, at, in, at thatpoint in time, part-time jobs
(15:40):
were growing on trees.
You know, people were crying,crying out for, um, casual labor
and stuff.
Mm-hmm.
So it was very easy.
To find a job or find a fewjobs, which didn't actually get
in the way of anything.
Mm-hmm.
And what really attracted me toit was okay.
Now there are lots of people whoare gonna think I'm mad when I
(16:03):
say this.
That's okay.
We like mad here.
Mad is fine.
And one thing.
Alright, let me, let me ask youa question if I do you, okay.
They've taken it off thesyllabus.
If I say pausing, what doesthat, does that say anything
pausing part to pause?
P-A-R-S-E.
(16:24):
Okay.
Uh, it, no.
Okay.
It used to mean, um, okay.
You can actually pause a, uh, acomputer program, which means go
through it.
And that was a new use of theword that I hadn't heard.
It meant that you Okay.
English O level.
Mm.
When they had, they had O levelsand stuff back.
In my time.
(16:45):
They've now, I think roughlyGCSEs.
Yeah.
I, I don't, I think they'reroughly the same thing.
More or less.
Yeah.
And, um, uh, the English O levellanguage, or English language O
level was actually an exam that,um, uh, that really a lots of
(17:05):
people had a lot of difficultywith.
And as far as I know, there's noEnglish language, a level.
There never was.
And okay, to get a usefulcombination of O levels, uh, you
have to have English languagemathematics, or a natural
science.
Yeah, a foreign language thatdoesn't seem to be a requirement
(17:25):
any longer.
And, you know, um, whatever elseyou could sort of clock up
basically.
Yeah.
But those three things, and theEnglish language exam was in
three parts, which, the firstpart was a piece of pausing.
Okay.
Now what does that mean?
They get, you've got a text andyou go through it.
(17:46):
You have to identify, you haveto analyze it.
What each word is doing in thesentence, what its relationship
is to all the other words.
Yeah.
So basically you start off,right, find the verb and you can
either divide the sentence upinto subject, verb and the rest
of it, or um, just subject andthe rest of it.
(18:07):
Yeah.
And then, um, identify all thebits and pieces, subordinate
clauses, what each word is doingthere.
I used to love that.
What exactly is happening in thesentence.
Yeah.
And, um.
To my mind, I have a feeling itgives some kind of insight into
something.
I dunno whether that's purelypsychological or whether it's
(18:29):
well, but do you notice it indifferent languages?
Like from talking differentlanguages?
Oh yeah.
The things that you are able toexpress in one language is
different to another.
Uh, they, the formulation isdifferent.
Yeah.
And, um, uh, we, um, and, uh,and this, okay, this was called
pausing.
Previously it had been calledconstruing, I think.
(18:51):
Okay.
Or whatever.
And in Norwegian it's calledAli, which means functional
function analysis.
Okay.
Like, what exactly is thefunction of each word?
Each phrase and the whole thing.
And, um.
Then the next bit was prey,which is a very useful skill to
have.
You get a, um, passage andyou're supposed to reduce it to
(19:14):
a certain, a given number ofwords, which they give usually
approximately a third.
Yeah.
Which, so you go through it,pick out all the different
points, um, and then yousummarize the important points.
Yeah.
And if you've got a few wordsleft over, you don't produce
padding.
You find out which is the mostimportant of the points that
(19:36):
you.
It didn't include.
Yes.
And um, that, uh, is a veryuseful skill, Uhhuh and, uh,
okay.
The prey, uh, most people managethat.
Um, the third part was an essayand well write an essay.
Yeah.
And the, um, the language bitis, um, divided into three bits.
(20:04):
The history of the language,both old and modern.
Um, the dialects.
Okay.
The dialects are very important.
The important thing is how didthey, how did they arise from
Old North?
Am I right in thinking you're anexpert in old nor?
Uh, I did, uh, that's a goodquestion.
(20:27):
I did get that reputation at onepoint.
We can't remember any of it now.
And the reason.
I got that reputation, uh, not,not deserved to my mind was
that, uh, at one point they, um,they used to have, uh, as a
(20:50):
separate exam at one point inprogression.
Mm-hmm.
And, um, it used to be oral andI thought, oh God.
Okay.
So I, I didn't, I never crammedanything.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, I just read it again andagain and again and Okay, that's
an I stem and how.
Um, how did it arise from ProtoNordic and Common Germanic and
(21:13):
the whole thing?
And so I thought just to makesure that there's nothing, no
questions when I have to, when Ihave to sort of learn it by
heart.
And when, when I had to learn itby heart, I discovered I already
knew it, just by having lookedat it.
And then do you have aphotographic memory?
Possibly?
No.
don't.
Not to mind.
Okay.
Not to my mind as far as I know.
(21:33):
Okay.
Because I learned scripts and Idefinitely couldn't just read
something and then know itafterwards.
Yeah.
No, no.
I mean, I've been sort oflooking at it for a while and
going through it.
Right.
Uh, I just sat in the lounge allby myself with these books and,
uh, coffee and went through itall.
(21:54):
For five days and learnedactually a lot, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Very peaceful, very nicesurroundings.
And, uh, back then it was anoral exam.
Normally it takes half an hour.
They had me in there for an hourand a quarter.
And, um, the, uh, so, um, you,well, you go in and you've got
(22:20):
an examiner and a sensor.
The examiner answer questions,the sensor decides which
questions are to be asked, andum, then they send you out and
they get together and discusswhat mark to give you.
Mm-hmm.
And, okay, so.
I get in there, I get presentedwith this piece of paper,
translate these, those twoverses of Al, Al means the
(22:41):
speech of the high one.
Mm-hmm.
Odin.
Okay.
It's an ed poem and you can'treally do, um, do an ed poem
unprepared unless you're a realexpert, a saga.
Um, you can actually, thevocabulary is so limited.
Um, uh, you can do it if you, ifyou've read one, you can
(23:03):
understand the rest of them,basically.
Mm-hmm.
Although you do notice adifference in style and some of
those, uh, they're quitedramatic.
And, um, so I had prepared itand, uh, went through it.
I went through the, the, the twoverses, and on the basis of
(23:24):
those two verses, they grilledme on the entire, on the, the
entire grammar.
Okay.
It's highly inflicted, um, forcases and so on.
And, and what was that and wheredoes it come from and how did
it, uh, produce, come into thatform?
And, and I thought, God, okay,so long as she sticks to the
grammar, this were some bits ofthe syllabus I hadn't read.
(23:46):
Mm.
So long as she sticks to thegrammar, I'm safe.
And, um, and she, they hammeredaway and hammered away.
And I made one blunter, whichthey let me know about
afterwards, which was, uh, okay.
All these poems are written downin the manuscript called Codex
Codex, code Codex, the, um, theRoyal.
(24:11):
Codex or whatever, which wasactually written in on I in
Iceland.
Mm-hmm.
And, um, then it was taken tothe, uh, museum in Copenhagen.
And, um, they said, okay whenwas it taken to the museum?
And I said, oh, around, um, inthe 11 hundreds.
(24:33):
That was such, such so totallywrong.
And so they said actually no, itwas 1662.
Right.
So, of course I remember thatdate.
Um, uh, okay.
They said, well, that was justtotally wrong.
It was obvious you were flickinga gear there.
And tragically the, themanuscript was destroyed in the
university fire.
(24:53):
But the contents are recorded,so.
Mm.
And, um, okay.
So I went out.
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
And then of course, usually insuch situations you will be
called back, uh, at some point.
Mm-hmm.
After they've deliberated andthey'll tell you uh, what your
(25:14):
results are.
Not that ish.
They are not merciful.
They sort of broadcast it so theentire corridor can hear it.
And I thought when that was okayfor me, because I'd actually got
an astonishing good mark.
Excellent.
And, um, uh, that's how I gotthat reputation.
Yeah.
Got a reputation being, um, the,an expert, um, the secretaries
(25:37):
in the records departmentactually knew who I was, which
was interesting.
And, um, they said, yeah, well,with a name like yours and those
kind of marks, you're going,you're going to be remembered.
Okay.
That's nice.
Not all my marks were thatbrilliant, but those were, and,
um, so yeah.
(25:59):
And so for, for a while, but ifyou don't use it, I mean, it
disappears.
I'm pretty hopeless.
Yeah.
And um, yeah, we've run into abackwater.
No, that's right.
Well, this is a good opportunityfor us to pull a ring.
(26:25):
If you enjoy this podcast, thenplease consider supporting me at
patreon.com/joly Rose.
This is something that Iabsolutely love doing, making
this podcast, and it's the waythat I've figured out to create
an audience and a platform forme to express myself as an
artist from the limitations ofliving on a rock in the middle
(26:48):
of nowhere.
And.
I love limitations.
I think it's key to the creativeprocess.
It's something that I've oftenworked with, even when I had the
freedom of living in Brightonand being in the UK and having
access to vast numbers of peopleand the ability to travel around
the place and go to differentvenues and be in the world of
the arts and take shows toEdinburgh.
(27:10):
I still like to put limitationson the work that I did because I
feel like when there's too muchchoice, it's.
It's kind of overwhelming.
So I do feel like.
There's something quiteinspiring and beneficial about
the limitation that I have ofbeing on this small island.
I, it doesn't paralyze me orfill me with dread or fear.
It fills me with the excitementof, okay, well then what can I
(27:31):
do?
I can write books and I can makepodcasts, and that's what I'm
doing.
That's what I'm creating from myLittle Rock.
And I love it and put onfestivals.
So yeah, it's working with whatyou've got and limitations
actually make you focus becauseyes, something about being in
Brighton and having all theoptions in the universe means
that it can be quiteoverwhelming.
(27:52):
So I have some creativeofferings that are coming up
that.
You are welcome to come and joinin with.
So I'm gonna be openingBoomTown, which is very
exciting.
I'm gonna be on the Lions gatestage as part of the opening
ceremony.
And then we have a venue calledLa Luna Coven, which is in Old
Town.
So if anyone's gonna be atBoomTown and wants to come along
and say hello, please do.
That'd be lovely.
(28:12):
I'll also be at Kentwell Hall inSuffolk, uh, in August after
Beam Town.
For, uh, a week dressing astutors.
So if you live in Suffolk, I'mfancy coming along to Kentwell
Hall, then you can come and seeus performing as the Mamas at
Kent Royal's reenactment inAugust.
Also we are gonna be walking apilgrimage across the uk,
(28:33):
September to October.
And if you go on my socialmedia, which is Korea Arts,
K-R-I-Y-A-A-R-T-S, and that's onFacebook and Instagram.
I've put the dates up for wherewe're walking and when.
And so you can have a look atthat and see if you are in the
area.
So if you would be interested inus coming along and performing
for you, or if you want to feedus or if you want to, um, how us
(28:55):
for the night, or if you'refancy coming and walking with us
for a day or two, get in touchand let me know there's also my
book's gonna be coming out atthe end of the year, which is
called Walking with Autumn.
And it'd be great if peoplecould pre-sale order it because
pre-sales are everything.
So I will be launching that as acrowdfunder soon for people to
be able to.
(29:16):
Get those early purchases in,and you'll be able to choose
whether you get just that bookor if you get a collection of
all my books signed and if youget'em in hardcover, et cetera,
and all the money will gotowards paying for an
illustrator and just finishingthe last bits of the book off.
And last but not least, it isthe British Podcast Awards and
(29:37):
there is the.
Listeners choice, so if youenjoy this podcast, please go
and vote for it at the Britishpodcast awards.com/vote type
nonsense.
In the chaos, click vote.
Reply to the confirmation email.
It's as easy as that.
And just, yeah, let's get, getan award for this podcast.
That would be amazing.
(29:57):
So if you enjoy it, please do dothat and share that you've done
it with people and let peopleknow that you are supporting
this podcast.
So thank you ever so much.
And now on with the show.
(30:23):
So you know about rings, we'vechatted about rings before.
Yeah.
I said to you, the reason why wedo this is for an element of not
the nonsense and the chaos.
So it's letting the universelead.
And then you said somethinginteresting, which is, is the
universe chaos?
So what's your thoughts on that?
What's your thoughts on whetherthe universe is chaos or not?
Well, um, well I, Einsteinactually rejected the quantum
(30:50):
theory to begin with.
I dunno quite what he know, whathe did at the end.
Um, okay.
Einstein is the very famousfather of theory, of relativity,
as most of us know.
Yeah.
Even if we anything aboutrelativity.
And he said God does not playdice with the universe.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
(31:10):
Things are very systematic andthey follow certain rules and
things happen and so on.
But the thing with, um, quantummechanics is that.
Things seem to be, uh, can getvery random.
You don't even know what's goingto happen.
And this good old professor, heHeisenberg with, um, his
(31:31):
uncertainty theory and poor, um,that poor theory, it's been
being used to justify so manythings.
Mm-hmm.
Um, there's a, a ratherinteresting physics experiment
actually, that you send a streamof electrons through this metal
(31:52):
plate with two slits in it.
Yes.
And yeah, you get this aninterference pattern as though
you were sending night through.
Mm-hmm.
And.
So wait a minute.
This means that the electronmust have gone through both
slits for there to be aninterference pattern.
This is a wave patternassociated mm-hmm.
(32:13):
With, um, with the electron.
And how can the electron havegone through both slits?
Yeah.
This is a matter of, um, sortof, people say, well, perhaps
the wave pattern went throughboth slips, but the electron
didn't.
And, um, no one's been very goodat explaining this.
And the strange thing is, and Idon't know quite how it's done,
(32:36):
that if you photograph the, um,photographically, you can
actually discover which slip theelectron went through.
If you do that.
You don't get the interferencepattern.
Which means that there is nosuch thing as an impartial
observer.
So this means that our, uh, ourunderstanding of what happens
(33:01):
stops the phenomenon occurring.
Mm.
And that is very weird.
Yeah.
And someone, someone else hasmodified the, the, the model
saying the electron goes throughone, one slip, then it goes back
again and goes through the, theother slit and said, well,
actually it's, it's just amodel.
Who knows?
Yeah.
What exactly happens?
(33:23):
And Einstein, because of thisrandomness, um, he, uh, he said,
oh, it's all got to do withhidden variables.
It's not really random.
So yeah, we don't know.
I always think that it's, it islike to do with scale.
So on one scale.
Things fit with certain rules,but then on another scale they
(33:46):
don't.
And it's almost like the more infocus as in this scale, things
are, the more it fits the rulesthat we know.
Yeah.
But the further out you go andthe further in you go, the less
it behaves.
On the other hand, um, uh Okay.
On a, on, on a macro level,things happen on a micro level,
(34:06):
things are a bit different.
Yeah.
Which is roughly what you said.
Yeah.
And actually theoreticalphysics, is Okay.
Very much.
Very much magical magic in areal technical sense.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Well have you define ic.
The theoretical idea of magic isthat you you manipulate the
(34:30):
reality behind the illusion thatwe experience.
Yeah.
In a way, by doing things tothe, the real reality behind it,
you will have an effect on whathappens in our illusory world.
And so very often people whopractice magic like Kalari
(34:51):
mm-hmm.
Um, in Nigeria, they, uh.
They will do, perform some, uh,some ritual, and if it doesn't
work, of course, then they'llhave a built-in explanation for
failure.
Yes.
Like, you know, crocodile motherhad a bad day or something.
You know, you never know.
But the ideas there I, I there'scome up a couple of times in
(35:15):
podcasts, uh, where I've hadconversation with people and
actually one of them was afriend whose, um, partner had
died and she saw him in a dream.
And, um, she said to him like,what's it like?
And he said, well, it's a lotmore organized than you'd
imagine.
Yeah.
And that's how I feel is that itseems like chaos to us because
we don't understand it.
But actually, if you understandit, then it's not chaos, but we,
(35:36):
you know it, whether we'll everget to that point.
So you are then with knowledgeof the reality behind our
illusion, which we can onlyunderstand in terms of
mathematical equations, um,allows us to make things happen
(35:56):
in our illusory world.
I mean, most of this table seemspretty solid to us, but actually
most of it's mostly empty space.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is great.
I love it.
Um, brilliant.
So if you pull a rain Alright.
And then that will, um, inspirewhat we're gonna talk about.
Okay.
And do you know the res?
Yep.
That's LI don't know the namesof them.
No, but, but that's the L ruin.
(36:17):
Yes.
Lagals.
And it's the water.
It's the RO of water.
Okay.
And so we are on an island inthe sea.
So what made you keep comingback to Sark?
You came here, you've beencoming here for 11 years.
What is it you love about theplace?
Yeah, I like it.
Yeah.
That's it.
I like it here.
And when I get here, I think.
Ugh.
(36:38):
Yeah.
A sort sigh of relief somehow.
Yeah.
And of course the first time Iwas here, there was this girl,
ter, who um, she sort of lookedaround and said, Toki must have
been here.
This is just like the Shire.
And I thought, Hmm, okay.
And one thing, the first time Iwas here, there were, okay, the
(36:58):
first, was it the first evening?
I think the first evening I wasup at the mermaid here.
And, um, actually on the wayback got lost because I missed
the turning.
And because of course no streetlamps, okay, I did actually have
illumination, not that I wasusing it.
And I thought, okay, wait aminute.
(37:19):
I dunno quite where I am.
And at that, uh, at that point,there was one thing that looked
like could be a street lamp, andthat was the pub sign at the
mermaid.
Okay.
So I managed to find that,right.
Let's start again.
And, um, and then I didn't missthe turning and I managed to
find my way.
But, uh, that was, um, how thefirst time, okay, how do I, how
(37:42):
do I know where Mermaid, how doI know where Mermaid Lane is?
At the top of Mermaid La Lane inRuca, uh, on the.
Left hand side coming from themm-hmm.
The was, there used to be what Iused to call the pixie
sculpture.
I don't know if you rememberthat.
No.
No.
And it was a sculpture which wasrather active.
(38:06):
It was made of metal, iron steelor something.
And, um, it was move it mo ithad moving parts and it had toad
stools.
Hmm.
You know, fly ic ones, you know,red ones with white spots made
of iron and orchid things.
And water came down and.
(38:27):
Went into the container, alittle hole at the bottom, lets
water out.
But obviously water went outmore slowly than it came in.
So when the container got full,it then tipped over and there
was a sort of, um, stalk with alittle ball at the end, which
then hit one.
(38:47):
The mushroom is relevant,mushroom went bing or bong and
wow.
And, uh, and you had, and therewere quite a few of these just
going.
And so you got, I guess the, themelody or whatever, it did
repeat itself at some pointbecause it was quite regular,
but it didn't seem very regularbecause these things were.
(39:08):
Just pinging and ping, um,hitting, hitting the toad stools
with different, um, oh, thatsounds really cool.
And I think they then, I thinkthey turned it off because some
neighbor was complaining and I'mnot surprised.
Yeah.
And then it's not there anymore,you know?
I think that's very tragic.
Yeah.
And um, so that's one, uh, thatwas one of the things that
(39:30):
struck me.
And, um, has it changed much?
Is there anything noticeablychanged?
Uh, changed?
Um, smoke, uh, not allowed tosmoke in pubs anymore.
No.
Able to do that.
Uh, what else has changed?
Um, electric, uh, when I firstcame there was a public, uh,
(39:51):
there was a pubs illuminated pubsign.
Yeah.
And the pub sign got blown away.
And, uh, what else has changed?
Yeah.
Um, no motor vehicles wereallowed, privately owned, except
Okay.
The night of Sark, the same yearhe's allowed to have a private
motor vehicle.
Mm-hmm.
(40:11):
Okay.
And as you know, tractors arearound, but there are very
definite rules about what you'reallowed to do with them and
everything.
And, um, which can be bent.
I mean that the bus service isnot really allowed by law, but
it's kind of necessary.
So it's a lot.
Yeah.
And, um, you could have have youread much of the law?
(40:32):
No.
You just sort of know free.
Yeah.
Just from what you've heard.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was wondering whether youcould, uh, read Norman French
then?
Uh, I managed to I thought,okay, I can, I can under this is
very odd French, very strange.
And I can understand what iswritten here.
God knows how it pronounced,how, you know, how it's
pronounced, but I can, can workout what it's, what it actually
(40:57):
is saying.
Okay.
So, uh, man, I manage that one.
But can you, so can yourecognize Sarkis at all when you
see the, the Patois?
Is it there isn't any relationto that and Norse?
No.
Well, actually I don't know muchin the way of Patois.
MI know that one.
Mm-hmm.
That's, and, um, that's aboutthe only one, only bit of ua.
(41:18):
I know, actually, I think uhbecause it wasn't written down
as a language, it was an orallanguage.
So you don't Yeah.
There aren't sort of manuscriptsthat are around or anything like
that.
I heard, I heard that someonehas actually codified it.
Yes.
The, a guy called Martin did dothat.
And is it still okay for alanguage to be called living?
There have to be two stillliving people who speak it,
(41:41):
there are still two.
There are still two.
There were only two left.
Yeah.
All right.
One isn't enough then beingused.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
We are trying, I mean, there,there has been, he has, um,
recorded it and has taught someof it to the school children and
uh, yeah.
So it's barely living.
But yeah, it would be sad tolose it.
(42:02):
It would be a shame, but we'dneed people to learn it.
It might be a good idea towrite, write stories in it.
Yeah.
Children's stories of whatever.
Yeah.
It's very difficult to getpeople to learn it.
When it's so unused.
Yes.
You know, the yeah.
And also what's the point?
'cause in a way, should we learnFrench, you know, and that would
be a bit more useful.
(42:22):
Right.
So it's that thing of, but it's,but also it'd be really sad for
it to be lost, but it is prettymuch lost.
Do you feel like you are, um,from anywhere, rooted anywhere,
or do you feel like you're sortof a, sorry, do you feel like
you're from somewhere or do youfeel like you're a person of
world?
Um, yeah.
When I say Pete, where are youfrom?
I have really real difficultytrying to answer that question,
(42:44):
so I'm not quite certain.
Uh, uh, where do you feel mostat home or most belonging?
Well, actually at the moment,um.
Norway, Oslo, I suppose.
Yeah.
I don't know.
And I seem to sort of blend inwith the local population as,
uh, actually in Mar in 1991.
(43:05):
This is kind of funny.
Uh, I was a witness in a courtcase, and it was my job to
explain to the court how theaccused and the interrogator had
managed to misunderstand eachother completely without either
of them understanding.
There had been amisunderstanding so basically
(43:26):
the, the accused had managed tosign a statement which he had
done without a lawyer and youcan withdraw your statement.
Um, not always a good ideabecause it doesn't do good
things for credibility.
But he didn't withdraw hisstatement.
He just said, but that is notwhat I said.
Yes, but this is your name,written by you.
(43:46):
And so, in spite of the factthat the statement had been read
back to him or read out to himclearly and loud, loud and
clear.
Mm.
He still had not understood whatwas there.
Right.
And uh, this caused a certainamount of confusion.
So I wound up, I actually knewthe guy, so I knew quite a lot
(44:10):
about his, let's say, languageshortcomings, right.
And also with my background, Iknew a bit about language and
how, how language works.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, the defender said, heldup the statement and says, Mr.
Okay, the best translation isdeputy sheriff.
But these things are verydifficult to translate anyway,
(44:33):
so Deputy Sheriff Gundersonsays, this is the truth.
What do you, uh, regards thisas?
Reality?
What do you say to that?
So poor Mr.
Gunderson.
Okay.
So, um, uh, and explained how,because of the the explained
that the accused had, quote,insufficiently or, uh,
(44:56):
insufficiently, is that the wordthat I used?
Unusually?
Yeah.
I can't remember the first word.
Let's say insufficiently orunusually or un normally well
developed general lingualskills.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
And explained with examples thateveryone could understand from
(45:17):
everyday life, how suchmisunderstandings could, um, in
the case of this person couldtake place.
Mm-hmm.
And then, okay.
That seems, and the.
The, the defen, the defenselawyer said afterwards, that was
extremely clear.
And I said, well, perhaps Ididn't say enough.
He said, oh, you said exactlyenough.
(45:37):
You stop exactly when youshould.
Exactly.
That was excellent.
And um, so the prosecutor getsup and starts asking me a couple
of stupid questions just to getthe ball rolling and, oh God.
Then he asked me two questionsin one, and I thought, okay,
come on.
(45:58):
Yeah.
Because, but he, he, the, whenyou get these two questions, get
them both explicit.
Yeah.
Any order you like or theuttermost appropriate in the
situation, and that each onehave its own separate.
Correct answer.
Yeah, that's the point.
And he, I said, get on with it.
(46:20):
And okay, so if you, if you aska normal witness this, they
might get stuck.
Ask a normal expert witness,they might get stuck like that
character did.
Yeah.
But I couldn't understand whythe hell he got stuck on it.
But, and um, but if you ask thatsort of question to someone who
is supposed to be an expert withabout linguistic things, you're
(46:44):
like, wow, come on.
Kidding.
And so I said, oh yeah, okay.
And very politely, do you mean,and for the life of me, I can't
remember what he asked me.
I've been kicking myself eversince.
Do you mean this or a or do youmean.
B.
Okay.
(47:05):
Okay.
They're now both explicit.
Mm.
And then he says, just answerthe question please.
Okay.
This sudden change of manner.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's a normal piece ofmanipulative, rubbish.
And what he actually meant wassay yes or no.
Now, if he had said, just sayyes or no, I would've appealed
to the judge and said, yourHonor, I can't answer this
(47:27):
question.
It's a half truth.
Yeah.
And I have promised on my honorand my consciousness to tell the
whole truth, the, um, uh, thetruth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth.
All right.
So if the court was to releaseme from my promise, I'll answer
the question.
Yeah.
But, um, I can't answer thequestion without breaking my
(47:48):
promise to the court.
Yeah.
Okay.
That would've blocked that one.
Mm-hmm.
But he didn't, he said, justanswer the question please.
And he's expecting.
A yes or a no, I mean, whatever.
And I said, well, well certainlythat's what I'm here for, very
politely.
And, um, um, and as the first,uh, step in the process we have
to which of the two possiblequestions you would like an
(48:10):
answer to.
And so, and I say the answer tothe first question, and I'm
going to answer the ex, theimplicit one first of course.
'cause he can cut me off at anytime.
Mm-hmm.
And he sees, where's it go,where it's going, no further
questions.
Mm.
And turns round and goes to sitdown.
And so I say to his back, very,sort of in a very fatherly
(48:35):
fashion, but didn't, uh, didn'tyou want an answer to your
question?
And he didn't answer.
And the judge had to step in andsaid, it doesn't look like it.
So the jury started laughing andwhat the manipulation becomes
visible.
When it doesn't work.
Yes.
When it works, it's prettyinvisible.
Yeah.
When it doesn't work, it sort ofbecomes very invisible.
(48:56):
I love that.
That's what sort of a kind ofmagic is, is that the Yeah.
The, the behind the scenesmechanics of what's actually
happening once you understandthe matrix.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's really cool.
Well, actually, that brings thesong perfectly to the Chaos
Crusade.
(49:19):
Alright.
Because that's what the ChaosCrusade is, is something that
you would suggest to listenersto try out, that helps them
break the matrix.
I mean, maybe learning a bitabout linguistics sounds like
quite a good thing, but anythingyou'd suggest to help break the
matrix for someone to, don'twhatever in Okay.
In confrontation with amanipulator, keep calm.
(49:43):
Okay.
If you're going to get angry.
Make sure you know what you'redoing first.
Mm-hmm.
Don't answer spontaneously.
Would it be a good idea to getangry now?
And if the answer is yes,because sometimes, you know, a
sort of piece, a blast, uh, go,um, may actually suddenly do the
(50:03):
trick mm-hmm.
Can get rocked back.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and they may be implyingsomething.
Okay.
Let them make it explicit beforeyou relate to it.
And in this, yeah, in thiscontext, it's right.
Ironically.
Uh, a few months later I wasactually arrested myself and it
(50:25):
was a very, very minor matter bythe time we'd and I never denied
it.
Um, by the time we'd finishedmy, I was sentenced to 14 days
suspended.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Which is the mildest penalty forwhich Norwegian law makes
permission, makes, um,provision.
Okay.
(50:45):
So obviously I hadn't tried toshoot the king or anything.
Mm-hmm.
An extremely minor matter.
And then the, the interrogatorI.
Uh, I was arrested on that.
Important Sunday evening.
Okay.
Okay.
At, uh, nine o'clock.
I remember that.
And, okay.
So, um, and then we'd begin 12hours later.
(51:08):
Okay.
Wind up in a cell.
Yes.
Okay.
Then I get breakfast, right?
Half past eight.
Yes.
No milk and sugar for thecoffee.
Uh, okay, nevermind.
And, um, then he I'm collectedby the interrogator who starts
off being very, um, veryfriendly and everything and
offers me a cigarette that won'thappen these days, but then,
(51:30):
and, um, et cetera, et cetera,et cetera.
And then starts asking me alittle bit about my life story.
I'm not gonna tell him.
Mm.
Um, okay.
This character was a totalnarcissist because, um, none of
my life story had not, nothingto do with anything.
If he was trying to extract fromme tactically important
(51:52):
information, then I would'veunderstand.
Understood.
But, uh, he was just basicallytrying to, uh, he was just a
control freak and, you know, hisidea seemed to be, well, I can
get anything out of anyone, uh,more or less.
And, and so I, I was very politeto him and, uh, I said, no, I
(52:15):
think we'll stick to therealities of the case.
Okay.
Any sensible police officerwould just have said, right.
You go along with this.
Yes.
Sign here please.
Yes.
Five minutes.
Okay.
You'll be hearing from us.
Okay.
I'm probably gonna get a fine,couple of hundred quid or
something.
Little Very irritating, but notvery crippling.
Mm-hmm.
And, um.
(52:35):
And that would've been it, butnot this character.
He just carried on all day.
I okay.
And so he says, yam, you can,uh, confess to that.
Yes.
Right?
And, and then he asked me aboutmy past.
No.
I think we'll stick.
Are you gonna make a statement,aren't you?
Because I, we've discussed thisbefore.
I say yes.
(52:55):
And leave it there.
'cause the word statement seemsto have changed meaning?
Yes.
And he's trying to, trying torattle me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, come on.
Just follow carefully what hesays.
um, give them an answer toexactly what they've said, not
what you think they meant.
If it's forget implications.
Mm-hmm.
You can relate to implicationsif you like, but on the whole,
(53:18):
just listen very carefully towhat they've said and answer.
Uh, give them an answer to whatthey've said.
So that was Ray Howard.
What a fascinating man.
It was such a joy to get to knowhim better and to really be
observing the way his mind worksbecause I've sat and chat to him
(53:39):
for hours at the pub, and we'vetalked about runes.
He told me loads of amazingstuff about runes.
Apparently the like places whereruins are written, which is on
stones in Norway, and, uh.
Sweden and places, you know, inthe Nordic countries, they're
written so they're not seen.
(54:00):
So they're written on the baseof rocks that are then upside
down.
So apparently they're not meantto be seen.
They're not meant to see thelight of day, which I just
thought was fascinating and.
He just is one of those peopleyou could talk to forever and
record everything he says andyou will constantly be surprised
and inspired and taken on ajourney by his conversations.
(54:23):
He knows so much, but he's.
Yeah, I mean obviously when theolder you get, the more, there's
just so many corridors to hismind, palace that you feel like
you are lo you're gonna be lost.
You know, it's like a maze.
But he does always find his wayback to the beginning of what he
was talking about, which isquite amazing.
Sometimes it can be an hourbefore he gets back to the start
(54:44):
of what he was talking about,but he does manage it, which is
always very impressive andthere's just so much in there.
So, yeah, I'm.
Pleased to have captured asnippet of some of ray's in a
world and to have seen a littlebit of the mechanics of how his
brain works and what it is thatinspires him and where it all
comes from.
And yeah, the, the rules andthe, the linguistics and grammar
(55:07):
behind language, just, it wasinteresting to see it through
his eyes and how.
It tells us so much more truthabout the world than what we
the, the content of what we'resaying.
'cause the content of what we'resaying is masking, and it's what
we work with in fooling.
You know, there's all the stuffthat we say that's pleasantries
and that's polite.
But within a split second, weread someone straight away.
(55:31):
You know, as soon as you walk onthe stage, people read you.
And the fool's job is to.
Be that is to be that honestthing, to admit the thing that
you are, that people can seerather than shielding it or
masking it.
And then to invite the audienceto do the same so that we can
all just be ourselves and bethe, the real being behind the
(55:51):
mask of the words that we use orthe image that we present.
So fascinating stuff and it wasso lovely to chat to.
Wonderful Ray and yeah, thankyou ever so much for being here,
as always, and I shall see youagain next week.
So see the norm.
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