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Superfan/benign stalker Alan Greening gave me some info on how to measure the size of the Stocean on Google Earth, so I can now tell you that the field I am clearing off stones has a perimeter of 1.75 km making it roughly 141,000 Sq metres or 35 acres. It’s obviously tougher to work out the number of stones, especially as most of them are submerged (realistically, given the action of the yearly plough will dig up others, so ideally I need to clear the stones to a depth of 2 metres). Even if there are only 100 stones in each square metre (and given I wish to rid the area of anything non-organic bigger than a grain of sand that is probably a low estimate) then there are over 14 million stones out there. I think my average is about 50 a day so it will only take me about 273 years to reach my goal. It certainly gives me something to live for.
Though illness and other commitments have kept me away from the field this week and I have taken the dog on a different walk on a couple of occasions. Almost like the reality of the beautiful dream of a new stone cleared UK I had had was nothing but a fantasy and that I was starting to realise it could never truly happen. And that I was sentencing myself to three centuries of back breaking drudgery in search of something that was impossible, impractical and would make me the laughing stock of the world.
But screw that. I am going to do this, On tonight’s night time stone clear I walked far out into the ocean to see if there were huge reserves of stones away from the relative safety of the shore. I’d imagined that the field would be littered, but the bit I went across was mainly soil. At least I think so. It was a bit hard to tell in the dark.
Anyway, don’t let the detractors bring you down. I have said I will clear the field of stones and build a giant wall visible from space and make the Mexicans pay for it and that is what I am going to do.
And I found a rare single doubler today. A stone that looks like it is two different stones separated by some little distance, but when you get it out you discover it is one stone with two peaks. There’s nothing better than that. Though I did found loads of reverse icebergs, where stones that looked like they would be huge once dug up turned out to be almost entirely on the surface and tiny. You win some, you lose some.
I hoped to do some work in the morning, but am still wiped out from lurgy and sleepless nights and so had a nap and then a bath and then it was my turn to look after the stupid kids. I wish I had just kept them as tamagotchi sperm that I had tried to keep alive in a bowl, feeding them sperm food under a microscope. If I had succeeded the oldest sperm would be about 4 and a half years old by now and probably the size of a goldfish. But that’s still a lot easier to look after than a child and I suspect people would pay to come and see a sperm of that size. And its slightly smaller brother. No one will pay to see my kids. And when you’re not even as interesting as an over-sized sperm then what have you got going for you? Not a lot.
In the bath I read my wife’s new book “When Good Geeks Go Bad†which isn’t out til January 10th, but I got a free early copy because I am sleeping with the author. It’s an evocative and very funny exploration of those difficult tweenager years as you try to navigate friends and parents. I identified with both the good geek, forced by circumstance and sadness to experiment with being naughty and the parents struggling to do the right thing for their child. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me relive the past and look to my future. My wife is a genius. Thank God there’s one good writer in the family. I may be in a bit of an emotional state though (or about to have a breakdown as stone clearing and log dogs and Hitler Teddy Bear kettles - see stone clearing podcast- might attest). I watched About A Boy on Netflix yesterday and today and as usual I cried during the school concert. But this time it was because I knew that the nerdy little boy would grow up to date Jennifer Lawrence.
Nicholas Hoult also auditioned for “You Can Choose Your Friendsâ€, though correctly decided the part was too small (he was just about to hit the big time with Skins). So I have met someone (and been professionally rejected) by someone who has dated Jennifer Lawrence. So that will do for me. It’s been a good life.
But after that terrible experience with Love Actually I do worry that crying at a Hugh Grant film is a sign that something is terribly wrong inside my head…. But you’ve never met anyone more balanced and sane than me, right?
