On being an individual…..

What does it take to be an individual? More to the point, what does it cost ? What does it take to swin against the tide? To stand your ground when everyone around you is falling.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote “The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him…The unreasonable man adapts the surrounding conditions to himself…All progress depends on the unreasonable man”.

When I was young my father used to to quite often tell us that we shouldn’t go along with the crowd. It was an irony not lost on me that he was also very main stream. He had a steady job, a home like everyone else and a family to bring along for the ride. Yes there were things he was outspoken on, but mostly it was about the music of the current youth, or the ‘long hairs’ or some other gripe about what was currently wrong with the world. It wasn’t really about making a stand and believing in something large, or deciding to uproot us all so we could travel the world. It was just the run of the mill.

It has made me wonder over the years because it’s turned out that I have been the black sheep. Well maybe not black….dark grey perhaps. I’ve turned my back on religion and politics, married and divorced, twice. Taken up completely different viewpoints that would shock people…my family mostly. I’ve travelled, learnt more about the world and questioned why about stuff that everyone takes as gospel. I suppose the break from religion set me on a bit of a path that has now been half my life. I still question the validity of things and their merit.

The cost? As I see it, my life has been enhanced but of course some friends have fallen by the wayside. At times it has been very difficult but I have had an unshakable belief that things will be fine eventually. And if they are not…we can change them. Nothing is set in stone. I have now, a small group of fantastic friends. They back me up, listen when I’m having a ‘spit’, drink and laugh and share their lives with me in a most fulfilling way. I don’t feel I should squash my life into what I can earn from a job. The job is not me. I look at things and ask “How can I get to it?”. We move forward in increments. The painfully slow progress sometimes can be a burden, but the price is worth the prize.

It takes a lot to stand your ground. Especially with people you have known for some time. Often the trick is to keep moving forward in the direction you want but bear in mind you won’t win all the battles. Be strategic. People will want you to believe in all sorts of stuff, but if you don’t want to, it’s your choice.

Just recently we had an election in this state. In other countries it is not mandatory to vote but here it is…as wonderful as that sounds. I was being pressured to vote for a particular person who I like by some firends. Now my stand is that I don’t vote for anyone at all. It is my right to vote ‘informally’. I relayed this to my friends but they were shocked I wouldn’t vote to encourage this person. My point being I didn’t want to encourage as the party machine will eventually chew them up and spit them out. Discarded. Why would I encourage that? The peer pressure was interesting from my standpoint and it certainly doesn’t bother me that I don’t vote…but I also don’t really get up in arms about the politics either. It balances out eventually so I don’t complain, the politicians have a difficult job trying to please everyone else.

Quite a long time ago I realised that the ‘alternative’ crowd were just as main stream but in a different direction. One guy I know said to me one day “You know it’s just a big circle, the extreme right and the extreme left meet in the middle…and they as just as scary as each other.” How different can we all really be?

I have come to a conclusion. This is that anything worth having or believing in is worth examining…very closely.

It’s alright to hold something up and proclaim that all of it is true, but is it? Is it worth believing if the chances are, it won’t hold up under scrutiy? Is there such a thing as absolute truth, and can we handle it if we hear it?

Where has the integrity gone?

I wonder sometimes where the integrity is with some people. It seems they will do anything for the almighty dollar.

Take my business for instance. We make a well known product and we are licensed to manufacture and install that product. In fact, that’s all we do. We don’t do other products or brands, just this one range. It works for us. There are also others who are licensed as we are in the same city but there is plenty for everyone.

Regularly we come across a clients who inform us that they had been quoted from other licensees and ask if we can match the price. Apples being apples, sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t. That’s the game we play.

But occasionally we find a client who has been told that “they aren’t selling the real product” from another licensee. Well, lets narrow it down a bit shall we….it is the same salesperson from the same company that does it time after time. In fact a few years ago when we were changing our business name for strategic reasons, this same salesperson was telling the prospective clients that we were going broke and that is why we were changing the name. Those in business will know that to change a name is very costly and the last thing you would be doing if you were broke is change the name. We know this stuff because clients who don’t know each other come up with the same story years apart.

I wonder about someone who is like this. He absolutely knows we are a licensee in fact we recently won an award from the parent company. Our details are on their website as being a licensee and we’ve been around long enough to be a thorn in their side. And yet he (yes it’s a he) feels it’s necessary to flat out lie to clients about us.

It puts us in a difficult spot as well. We can’t absolutely accuse unless we have proof or a signed statement from our client and I don’t want to put that on them. It’s not their fight. The parent company won’t do anything because we don’t have proof and yet this same company and individual has been doing this sort of stuff for years. So it’s not news to anyone at all.

I guess I stand on what I believe. Integrity is a core belief in my business and I tend to run with the theory that I mostly ignore my opposition and do my own thing. Yes I know the opposite theory also abounds but this is the one that I go with. You can’t keep running and check everyone else out at the same time. I also believe that us human beings are much more transparent than we think we are and mostly it will be picked up if we lie.

What to do?

I’ll probably do nothing as having a fight about it goes against my grain and if clients are that stupid, we probably don’t want them, but it still irks me that someone can’t be a real man and stand for something instead of standing for nothing except undermining others.

The big day out

April in this part of the world can have the most perfect days, not too hot, not too cold….just perfect. Easter Friday 2012 was one of those days. Time for a ride then.

I left home at about 6.10am, the streets were wet from an early morning shower as I rode towards the city and through the tunnel to the southside of town. The road was deserted being Easter Friday so I had probably the best run through I have ever had. I was sort of expecting a bit more traffic to be honest but glad there wasn’t. By the time I got to the other side of Ipswich, the air was a little cool and I stopped to put on my wet jacket over the top of my normal road jacket to cut the wind.

I stopped at Boonah to top up my fuel as I was heading down through an area with no fuel stops and the next fuel was almost at my tank limit. Just a precaution that I could have easily done without but pushing a 250kg bike is not my idea of fun.

It’s a pleasant ride to the end of the Fassifern Valley where Boonah is situated. The mountains in the background are where I’m headed.

These mountains are part of the Great Dividing Range that extends the entire eastern coast of Australia. The early settlers had trouble breaching the range in the early years and only managed a few places across. Even now there are only a handful in a few hundred kilometers.

One of these roads is the The Falls Drive through The Head Road. This road goes up in two stages to the top of the range. The first is through a twisty tree lined narrow road that passes through running creeks then up the side of the mountain. It pays to keep your wits about you on a bike here as some of the next 20km is unfenced with cattle on the road and this means shit all over the road in places. There are also kangaroos and wallabies ready to jump out at the sound of a car or bike. Normally these are most dangerous around dusk or even dawn but today I saw quite a few and had to brake quickly a number of times.

The climb up is steep. Not really sports bike territory but I have seen them here. The road is not fast, cars and 4wd’s are often coming down around blind corners so it pays to take it easy.

The view from the first step is great, to the left is a waterfall that drops about 100 metres. From here on a good day you can see for miles to the north east.

After this the road takes you through one of the prettiest valleys I know of. The soil here must be first class as the trees, Eucalypts and Pines are magnificent and as large as you see anywhere in Australia. this valley is home to a few dairy or beef cattle farms and once again it’s best to keep an eye out for the beasts.

At the end of this valley is The Head which you can see as you ride through the trees and across the landscape. This area is significant because it is the start of the longest river system in Oz. The water that collects here eventually flows through the Darling and Murray rivers to drain into the Southern Ocean south of Adelaide.

Right next to the lookout here is a restaurant and weekend cabins called Spring Creek Cottages. Nice place to have lunch if you are in no hurry. Further along this road as you travel toward Killarney are a number of waterfalls, the most well known is Queen Mary Falls. I kept going down to the Killarney turnoff and turned left.

This then will lead you over the Queensland, New South Wales border at the top of the hill. Heading this way, I kept pushing on though to the small village of Legume. Legume sits on the Mt Lindsay Highway and if you turn left here it takes you to Woodenbong, back over the border at Mt Lindsay itself and eventually gets to Beaudesert. Having been this way before on a bike it doesn’t appeal because the road to Woodenbong is…well lets just say it’s crap shall we?

So I continue straight on towards Tenterfield.

For those who don’t know it, the Mt Lindsay Highway from Legume is 93km long and a great riding road. It is wide, smooth with long sweeping corners and a few twisties. It also doesn’t have much traffic. In 93km I saw about 10 cars….three of which I overtook. The problem for most people is that it also has dirt. But as I discovered, the dirt starts at about 15km out of Legume, goes for about 5km, then becomes blacktop for a few km then dirt for about 3km then bitumen until about 55km from Legume for a final stretch of 4km of dirt. So all in all 12km of some of the best fine gravel roads I’ve ever driven on. It is smooth, well graded and can comfortably cope with 80kmh on a decent size cruiser.

A really pleasant ride actually. I can understand guys being worried about a bit of dirt but this is better than some of the bitumen I will ride over the rest of the day.

Riding into Tenterfield at about 10.15am I had covered 300km on different surfaces in four hours.

The trees are turning on the New England this time of year. Tenterfield is a quaint town that holds a special place in our history as the birthplace of Federation. Where we became an independent country. This should be enough but I find it a bit of a mix really. Some of it is very nice but other stuff leaves a lot to be desired. Like they lean too much on their heritage.

So I fuelled up and kept rolling down the New England Highway.

Quite a good road but can be a bit boring for a bike. The police keep a close watch and I saw a few. The traffic was not heavy at all so I rode for about an hour then stopped at Deepwater which is a small town before Glen Innes to have a burger and a coffee. The first real stop I’d had all morning.

From Deepwater I rode south some more until Dundee which is really just a siding and turned left along Dundee Bald Nob Road…what a name! This was about the roughest road I was on all day. It is a shortcut from the New England across to the Gwydir which goes across the Gibraltar Range and down to Grafton. The ten or so km of this road was enough and I was glad to get back on a main good road. Again, not much traffic, in fact I passed a caravan a couple of times along the way with my stops.

One of the stops was at Rasberry lookout. Facing south and looking over more of the Great Dividing range, it is a high point and a pleasant stop. I looked at the time and realised it was 6 hours since I’d left home. I figured I was about half way but with a lot of unknown before me so I had better get moving. You can see I still have my wet jacket on as the air up on the range was quite cool.

The ride down the mountain was fun, some fast stretches and only one car to pass. I eventually caught back up with the caravan as I reached the bottom and we travelled beside the Mann River.

At this point the air was much warmer and  I stopped to remove the wet jacket. These things are great to cut the wind and keep you warm but if it’s humid, they become unbearable.

The road from here took me to Grafton and I rode through the city centre and up to Casino about an hour away. There were a few spots of rain along this road but other than that it’s quite boring. Not very scenic. I stopped at casino and fuelled up. I had travelled 327km since Tenterfield and topped up with 14.95 litres. Good mileage for an old-ish bike. It didn’t miss a beat.

I figured I could get home on one tank from here so after a Red Bull and a chocolate, I got back on the bike and headed north.

Promptly getting lost!!

I don’t know how but I missed the turn to Kyogle and had to double back a bit to find my way. I do use a phone app Called MudMap and this is great to get me out of places I don’t know. It works as a GPS and can pinpoint me without phone service signals. Ideal for biking.

I rode north to Kyogle, carried on straight through towards the border. By now It was getting late in the afternoon so I was pushing it and not stopping. From Kyogle there are two ways to get to Beaudesert. Through the Lyons Road, which is scenic but a bit rough and twisty but shorter, or head north to the Mt Lindsay highway east of Woodenbong and then across the border. This was the way I headed. It was fast. I saw up ahead of me what looked like an ambulance but even though I was pushing, I couldn’t catch it. I did eventually catch up just as reached the turnoff and he had been slowed by another car.

The ambulance turned left, I went right and pulled up to put my wet jacket back on. It was cold again with the sun behind the hills.

Following the Mt Lindsay again, I crossed the border and headed towards Beaudesert. By the time I reached it the sun was down and darkness was setting in. I stooped for half an hour to let it get properly dark. Cars don’t seem to see you as well in half light, but in the dark with all the lights on it appears safer to me.

I followed the main road north to Brisbane then hopped on the arterial road that skirts around the city and across the Gateway bridge.

I was home just on 7pm having travelled 892km in almost 13 hours.

Quite a day. My ears were ringing for a while and the effects of the journey took a while to wear off.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Every now and then I see a movie that inspires me. A couple of weeks ago with some friends, we went and saw The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel…and loved it. Tonight we went back for another go.

I am not a critic, I see movies for entertainment and don’t really have an opinion of how an actor acts or what is portrayed. It all seems to be objective and like any art, someone loves it and someone hates it. Somethings can be polarising of course but quite often a movie is just entertainment and really not there to be taken that seriously. I quite like actors who say “I don’t care what I do as long as it’s fun for me” or “I don’t mind being the chick who dies all the time, it’s work” or “I take on everything I am presented with, without being choosy. The only time I turn down a role is when I can’t fit it into my schedule.”

I’ll leave you to work out who said what.

As I say, it’s entertainment for me. I do, however, think about the philosophy of the story sometimes and this is what I have done after watching Best Exotic. It says a lot about who we are and how we treat each other as human beings. It says a lot about engaging with life.

Quite often my wife has indicated she never wants to go to India for a holiday. Which is a pity because there are some great sights there and it’s a place I’d like to see. The movie may have changed all that for her. I think she is starting to see that wherever we go, humans are the same. It is because of the rawness that we find asia exciting, and India is certainly one of those places that is raw.

I have a theory that it is because of the difficulties that life is made more alive ..so to speak. I call it the ‘resistance is good’ principle. If something is uncomfortable, it highlights everything else and give appreciation for comfort. If it is difficult to get through, you will enjoy it more when it is complete.

In this modern life we all look for the easy way, instant coffee (hate it!), fast food, quick service, speedy this speedy that. What ever happened to slowing down and enjoying the process?

We were looking at coffee machines a couple of weeks back. There are machines that do everything for you, just press the button and wala!!! I am not an old fart whinging, but I appreciate a great cup of coffee takes time. Not a capsule of coffee that is inserted and out comes the instant result. I want it manual. I want a manual expresso machine that is simple but shows the process, while I chat to my friends. It is more enjoyable. Instead of rushing through the day and pressing buttons to get our fix. Maybe some stuff I want to get through fast but the enjoyable bits need to be slowed down.

I’d also like an old truck for the same reason. Not because I want some old heap lovingly restored to the prissy level I see some at. In fact I would hate that. No, I want an old truck that is lived in, but tough and reliable….manual. So I can enjoy the process. One of the reasons I love to travel by bike is you are almost in the landscape.

Asia is like this, there is the slowing down of life. The appreciation that life is a privilege, not a right. And yes, life is not kind to everyone. At all. But the children still play and laugh. People still find joy in just being alive. It is refreshing and wonderful.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel….I sat through it thinking…What an adventure!!

 

The first bend on the Yangtze

In south western China there are three parallel rivers. The Salween, which heads south becoming the border between Thailand and Myanmar for a time before finally draining into the Gulf of Martaban from the Myanmar side. The second river becomes the Mekhong which, after leaving China, borders Myanmar and Laos for about 200km then Laos and Thailand twice before flowing through Cambodia then draining into the South China Sea in a massive delta system just south of Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam.

The third river, which is the western most of the three, is the Yangtze. It travels it’s length entirely in China.

These rivers run within 18 and 66km of each other for about 300km. Then the Yangtze hits a mountain and turns north. This happens at the village of Shiguzhen and is known as the First Bend on the Yangtze. To reach Shiguzhen the closest major town is Lijiang, north of Dali.

You have to travel over a mountain pass of about 3000 metres, above the clouds. Spectacular scenery is laid out before you. We were there in August, not the best season for viewing because the cloud cover obscured the 6000 metre mountains. It also prevented us from seeing Tiger Leaping Gorge as it was in Flood and not very safe.

Shiguzhen is a quaint little village. It holds a place in history as the village where Mao escaped across the tributary Jinsha River in April 1935. There is a Monument and old forged link bridge at the spot.

As we walked past memorial monument I noticed a museum as well and Haba, our guide, said ” You can go in if you want but I am not very interested in these old things”. It seems the younger generation is trying to leave the past behind, even in China.

We wandered the streets of this little village built between the great river and the mountains. The children played on a mound of dirt as they do in any other place in the world. The old men sat around and played games or smoked.

The houses were a mixture of  old and new. Rammed earth, stone, concrete block, timber, steel, with grass growing from the roof.

The region is prone to earthquakes and it is easy to see why the buildings are as they are, being patched up.

The villages are very remote. Many of them were completely cut off from the outside world until less than 60 or 70 years ago. Political turmoil and some modern life seems to have passed them by although it’s easy to find the satelite dishes and solar panels if you look. It is not as backward as it seems at first.

This part of China is interesting. It’s best to go in a good season so do your homework. We only had this time of year so had no other choice. It is very different to other places I’ve been. The culture and infrastructure can be a bit of a shock. The roads I found most annoying, not wide enough for more than two trucks to pass and a drop off of at least 300mm on each side. So if you break down, everyone has to go around. On our day travelling across to Shiguzhen, it was slow going over the mountain pass caught behind crawling vehicles, stopped by broken down ones. If you want to be able to ease into it, find a guide who is reliable…read the reviews first…he/she will be able to organise stuff you won’t be able to understand. There is some spectacular country in China, especially Yunnan Province. Worth seeing once.

Back to that anvil…..

Last night a few friends gathered down by the beach here and drank away the stresses of the week. It was a pleasant atmosphere, not much breeze in a very picturesque spot, the sea was calm, the electric bar-b-ques were started and the conversation turned eventually to this blog…..and then the anvil.

I explained that Dave, the guy I bought it from, had told me that he bought it from a farm near Esk. This town is in the valley behind Brisbane, Queensland, about 100km if you go over the mountains and around the large dams that feed Brisbane. This area was one that was devastated by the flooding in January 2011. Esk itself had about a metre of water through the main street near the intersection that heads off up the range to Hampton and Toowoomba. Dave didn’t know anything more than that about it.

One of my friends who has a bit of a twinkle in his eye now and then deadpanned, “Don’t you know of that ancient Esk tradition of breaking an anvil when a farmer dies?”

This morning I met up with Dave out at Dayboro and I told him my friends suggestion. He giggled. I also said that if I had a restaurant sometime I’d like to name it “The Broken Anvil” and put the old thing out the front. But, I said, there wasn’t much chance of me starting a restaurant.

“How about a Bordello?” Dave pipes in.

This is why I love Dave so much…so not normal about anything.

Is it good enough?

How can you decide whether you have done a good enough job? As far as art goes, I think it comes down to being satisfied that you have done your best and it will stand scrutiny over time. And that in a few years time you can look at it and still love the piece.

This balustrade was fitted to a house in Gladstone Queensland in August 2006. The brief was done via email and post. I did all the correspondence with the builder, not the owner. The builder sent down to me a drawing of the space and I had free reign with artistic license. With a very small drawing on an A4 sheet, I was given the go ahead and a deposit I had asked for.

A courier dropped off the templates of exactly how the job was laid out and I was able to mark it out on my bench.

Some of the ‘sqiggles’ started out at about 2.5 metres long and were very difficult to work in the forge. Every piece was fully re-hammered to gain the texture. The large end pieces were milled by one of my neighbouring businesses and then sanded and re-forged.

The shapes created by the negative space work particularly well. The plates for the main rails and the separate handrail were cut, sanded and re-forged then drilled and countersunk so the batten screws would sit in correctly. The right angle at the top of the stairs was held together with small allen head screws to look like rivets.

The finish is a hot metal spray zinc and aluminium coating sanded down with 320 then spray painted matt black. Then is then sand again with about a 400-600 paper to achieve a look like pewter. This finish is very tactile and smooth as silk.

My favourite piece is at the bottom of the stairs. the first picture above illustrates the curves and shapes perfectly. Even though the top handrail opposite on the wall is shaped the same, the infill is different. the handrail underfill and wall plate almost look gothic.

It was nice to fit this into the home perched high on a hill overlooking the harbour. The contrast of something hand made into something modern has a satisfaction all of it’s own.

I drove about 6hrs north, never having sighted the job and the balustrade fitted perfectly…like it was made for it. The credit for this must go to the bulder who supplied me with perfect templates. No adjustments, just straight in.

So how do you know if you have done a good enough job? Revisit the job or at least, as I do, take another look at the photos. Does it still do it for you? Would I change anything? After almost six years, this job still stands out for me. It is simple yet complex enough to be interesting, it’s not too busy. I still love the shapes created. I would probably not change a thing.

Many people worship…..

In 2005 about six months after the tsunami that devastated the country, I was in Thailand. We did a tour and ended up at Phuket for the final week.

During the tour I was introduced to Chiang Mai and this city has become a favourite of mine in the last few years, returning there a number of times and discovering new stuff every time.

During that first visit however, I had a guide and she took us to Wat Doi Suthep on the mountain to the west of the city. The story goes that, wanting to find a site for a temple an elephant was let loose until it dropped dead and that is where the temple was built. They used to walk up to the temple but these days a nice road takes you there. I wouldn’t like to walk it.

When you arrive at the base of the temple, there are still 300 stairs to climb.

From the city it is easy to see Wat Doi Suthep as it glints in the sunlight, revealing the golden pagoda in the center of the temple area. It is covered in gold leaf and surrounding this is the story of the Buddha in pictures and I remember Tokki taking me around each painting and explaining each one and what it meant.

The inner part of the temple was busy, many people were there burning incense and praying. Near the end I remarked to her that I thought it amazing that so many people were coming here to worship.

She thought a moment and turned to me and said “Yes many people worship….but not many practice”

In those few words were probably the most profound thing that has ever been said to me, and I realised straight away that it was the same almost everywhere in the world with almost any endeavour.

We often like the ‘thought’ of something but don’t want to put in the ‘effort’. This has been talked about in history from the bible to modern day. We want something but the ‘practice’ is just too much. I have had friends that want to be blacksmiths but after the first hour, can’t pick up the hammer. I have known many people who want a business but don’t want to put in the hours and sheer relentless work that it takes to succeed. I have seen guys who want to be good at sport but would rather watch TV on a weekend. It’s all the same!!

Even though I never stayed in touch with her, Tokki taught me something very precious. Worship, wanting, wishing are not the same as practice, action, work.

The long trip

A week ago I was in Melbourne enjoying the sunshine and the start to the 2012 Formula 1 season. I had driven down with a mate to take a load of furniture to one of my step daughters in our workshop ute.

This is a journey of about 1800km and in the land of Aus is a two day drive. We left Brisbane at 5.25am on Thursday and drove through to Dubbo in central New South Wales. Stayed the night and had some wonderful Vietnamese food in town then left again the next morning at 4.30am headed towards Melbourne. We only got to near West Wyalong when we were diverted around flood waters. This added considerably to our journey and after one wrong turn and running the tank very low we finally made it to the Hume Highway which is the main route from Sydney to Melbourne.

Australia is such a vast place, my home state of Queensland is about three times the size of Texas, seven times the size of the United Kingdom and twice the size of Pakistan. Big in other words.

Most of Australia is uninhabitable being dry desert regions with no water…..until it rains. Then because it is so flat in areas, it floods massive areas. last year (2011) we had so much water it covered the size of Germany and Belgium in Queensland alone. Then it has to disperse slowly and it heads south west towards a couple of river systems that finally drain into the sea near Adelaide in South Australia. We sometimes forget this when we travel and even though the rain had stopped a week before, it kept coming downstream flooding the main highways. It’s a little hard to imagine until you see just how much water is lying around.

All the way to Melbourne and back, I checked the creeks for signs of how high they had been. Some had been over the roadway by substantial amounts but all had flooded recently. In almost 2000km, everywhere we went had been touched by the floods in some way. There are places just west of Brisbane where I live that have had at least 6 metres of water over the bridges on rivers that are normally 6 metres below the bridge…and these rivers are sometimes 100 metres across!! That’s a lot of water.

This may be a big dry land most of the time but it has been shaped by water in a major way.

Thinking opposite, countersteering and quantam physics

Quite often I come across a situation that defies convention. We believe one set of rules but in actual fact, the opposite is real.

I am a bike rider and as every bike rider knows, the physical effect of countersteering almost defies logic.

At low speed, to change direction on a bike you turn the bars in the direction you want to travel. In other words, if you want to go to the right, pull the right of the handle bar back towards you. As the speed rises, however an interesting thing occurs.To turn right, you have to push the right of the bar away from you!

Now I am no scientist so I will take a guess here. I think that as the centrifugal force exceeds the weight of the wheel, the force required to shift direction is counterbalanced. Whatever it is, it’s an oddity. Bikes are like that all round.

How is it possible for a racing bike, the MotoGP’s for instance, to corner at such angles and yet still be stable? I have watched world champ Stoner be over so far that his elbow is touching the ground. Some corners he has to be a little further out from the inside kerb because the kerb prevents him from laying it down far enough! Imagine that? The height of the kerb is only maybe 75mm and yet this is enough to alter his path. Apparently by being out that little bit, he can corner just that little bit faster and gain a fraction more on his rivals.

Quantam physics also has a logic defying state. Consider the atom. Again, I’m no scientist, but I’ve seen enough to understand the the atom is made up of almost nothing. And yet everything we see is made up of all these very things. It defies what we see in ‘the classic world’. We see solid objects that have varying degrees of hardness and yet they are all made up of atoms that vibrate at different frequencies. How can this be?

I have come to the conclusion that we have no idea about such things sometimes and the principles that define them are as difficult to grasp as almost anything, even life itself.