The High Wood

The first, really rough draft of my new novel has completed. Working title The Unfortunate Deaths of Jonathan Wild.

Jonathan Wild was a real historical character who lived in the early 18th century in London. He was the Professor Moriarty of his time, controlling nearly all crime in the city. He also ran a profitable thief-taking business and ran a “lost property” office for the recovery of stolen goods.

Justice, or at least the law, caught up with him eventually and he was hanged in 1725.

This book covers the years 1721 to 1725 and consists of the memoirs of a certain Pascal Bonenfant who worked for Wild during this period.

But crime is not the only theme. Beneath the hideous surface of 18th century London is an even more hideous depth. An evil priest is utilising forbidden knowledge in a bid to further his insane ends. The ghastly climax results, among other disasters, in the unfortunate deaths of Jonathan Wild.

I’ll keep you posted on version 0.2.

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Computers are really sensitive little animals. Everything has to be just right or they get very unhappy.

I was responsible for the world’s smallest bug the other day. Precisely 1 bit was wrong in a command – 0 when it should have been 1. This stopped all the background tasks on the system from running.

Fortunately it was a test system, not a production one. Even so. One lousy bit. Couldn’t the stupid machine have worked out what it was supposed to do?

One good thing. Until they get their act together, they are never going to take over the world.

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The government is due to announce the latest GDP figures shortly. And I care about this because?

I don’t know that I do. But I was prompted to think about it after our car was broken into last week. Midnight visitors broke into several cars in our street in the middle of the night and removed miscellaneous things from them. In our case it was the airbag.

The police informed us that sub-scrupulous wreckers have been known to provide “shopping lists” of items they will pay for, no questions asked. They use these to refurbish cars cheaply and flog them off. Airbags, being expensive, are a hot item.

We are insured and the car is currently being refitted with a new airbag and having the crowbarred passenger door sorted out. Insurance has paid for a hire car. We could have done without the $500 excess however.

What does this have to do with GDP?

Well, it occurred to me that our nocturnal visitors have generated quite a bit of economic activity. Car repairers, car hirers, insurance assessors have been employed in the process. These in turn use various disposable items such as paint, paper, petrol and lots of other things beginning with the letter ‘p’. If they are ever caught (ha!) the courts will come into play with judges, clerks, lawyers and of course sundry letter ‘p’ items – pens, pencils, paper, printers, photocopiers, pinot and so forth.
In other words, the GDP has increased as a result of all these activities. Thus, one could argue, crime is an important part of our economy, generating wealth all round. Except for the victims of course.

It is as I suspected. Economics is a bloody stupid discipline.

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