Geek Urban Myths: Better than real

And so comedian and Doctor Who fan Toby Hadoke today tweeted some news that broke my heart:

“As there are some who still don’t believe it: I’ve just received written confirmation that Harold Pinter was not in The Abominable Snowmen!”

Okay, some context: for years a story has done the rounds of fandom, that Harold Pinter was hired by the producers of Doctor Who, not as a lauded playwright but in his other role as a jobbing actor. Yes, the man who would go on to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature was employed to play a yeti-fighting monk. That is, frankly, an awesome story.

Only it’s not true. And I’m gutted.

It’s not that I want all geek myths to be true – I’m glad there’s not really a Munchkin suicide in The Wizard of Oz – but some make the world more interesting. I want Bob Holness to have played the sax solo on ‘Baker Street’; I’m kind of freaked out but intrigued by the idea that the CIA invented a nefarious arcade game. I wish Kate Bush had written a Doctor Who story under a pseudonym, and frankly it now doesn’t matter that Uncle Ben never said “With great power comes great responsibility” in the original comics, the phrase is now deep in Spider-Man’s bones.

Like any other culture, the geek community has evolved a mythology over time. Often that’s based on flat-out misinformation, but it catches on because a need is fulfilled – attaching names like Bush and Pinter to a show traditionally made on a shoe-string grants it a certain legitimacy and credibility; that’s why these stories find themselves embedded in fan culture. It’s probably worth noting that, when Neil Gaiman wrote for Who, his episode got its name from one of the show’s most notorious hoaxes. After all, reinventing mythologies is one of Gaiman’s great strengths.

All of which goes to show, sometimes it’s more fun to print the myth…

Geocaching, QR codes and Local History: Here’s a project for someone…

I’m a big nerd.

I don’t think this blog does a particularly good job in covering up that fact, but I should make it clear: I’m the guy who gets distracted by tourist information plaques. I’ll pick up leaflets about random places and subjects. I can momentarily find myself immersed in the most bizarre subjects. I’m a big nerd.

Okay, now those cards are on the table, why am I wittering about all this?

Well, I may have identified a gap in the market. See, I’m a big fan of wikis, I’ve dabbled in geocaching, and I live in the UK, where practically every wall was sat upon by Elizabeth I or Winston Churchill. And all those facts are coalescing into a project I don’t have the time, resources or know-how to run, so I’m throwing it out there. Heck, it may already be happening, in which case please let me know.

So, my proposal: all those tidbits of local history, folklore, science and religion you know, all those neighbourhood factlets your granny tells you every time you visit? What if there was a way to make them public, not just on a website that no-one remembers to look at, but using QR codes (or whatever smartphone-friendly technology would be most effective and accessible) to put all that information in situ, with GPS coordinates logged to allow individuals to track down interesting looking sites?

The QR codes could link to a wiki giving articles and videos about the place, and this could be added to by whoever feels able to contribute (notice I didn’t say edited – sure, that’s necessary when verifiable historical facts are wrong, but things get fuzzier when talking about, say, religious belief or the liminal world of folklore).

There would be the option to gameify this along the geocaching model, or use it as an educational tool. You’d want tourist boards, libraries, local history groups and websites like Atlas Obscura involved, but not just them, and you’d want a stonking great searchable database/GPS map tracking all this. Add in all the usual social media integration gubbins and you’ve got something that not only tells you the interesting snippets of history that surround us, but that might also generate enough data to explain why so many communities have a ‘Pig on the Wall’ story.

And you’d award points/badges/kudos to contributors, and hopefully inspire local champions who’d be able to visit, say, church coffee mornings and quiet back-street pubs to gather all the stories there. It could provide a handy infrastructure for preserving community memory. Heck, maybe even a way for communities to fight back against tragedy; following the recent school shooting in Newtown, the author of one of my favourite blogs talked about all the other things that defined the town – the place those affected by the shootings know intimately but that the rest of us only get to see when defined by the 24-hour news cycle. If a QR code and a wiki can help support that, then it will be worthwhile.

I know local variations on this have happened in the past – the QR code thing was inspired by a project carried out in Toronto – but it would be nice to bring it all together, to allow every city and every village to make their history and their uniqueness public. And I have no idea how to do this, but if some clever person could find a way to make it happen, I’d be one of the first to sign up and contribute.

Any thoughts?

Matt’s Derby Explorations #2: St. Alkmund’s Well

So I figured that I might get some sense of the Derby’s history from its patron saint. Thing is, it’s not that straight forward.

We don’t know a huge amount about St. Alkmund. The story begins in the medieval kingdom of Northumbria, which covered the north of England and south-east Scotland – in other words, not Derby. It was an area plagued by dynastic struggles, and in 765, the Northumbrian king Athelwald Moll was deposed by a group of nobles who gave the crown to Alhred. In turn, Athelwald’s son deposed Alhred, who promptly exiled himself to the kingdom of the Picts in Scotland. Alhred’s family remained in exile for around 20 years, until Alkmund lead an army in an attempt to reclaim Northumbria. It didn’t work – he was killed by men working for King Eardwulf around 800 and buried in, you’ve guessed it…

Lilleshall, Shropshire.

However, those pesky Vikings kept raiding England, and in order to preserve Alkmund’s posthumous dignity, his body was moved to Northworthy – or, in Danish, Derby. A church dedicated to him was built to house his relics, although that’s now under the ring road; while they were building the road, Alkmund’s tomb was dug up, and now resides in Derby Museum and Art Gallery.

Pretty soon, by 803 at least, Alkmund had been canonised and become the focus of popular devotion and miraculous happenings at various churches, with one of his most ardent fans being Aethelfleda, the daughter of Alfred the Great. This explains how someone we know next to nothing about became the patron of a bunch of churches throughout the Midlands. It also explains why, next to a block of residential flats at the back of Derby city centre, the last surviving Holy Well in Derby.

To be honest, I’m amazed at how easy it was to find Alkmund’s Well. I expected it to be in a field somewhere, or in a picturesque outlying village. Instead it’s pretty much in the city itself, almost as if an urban landscape grew up around it. Now it’s surrounded by railings, and a sign makes it clear that drinking the water wouldn’t be a good idea. It used to be part of the local tradition of well dressing, but that was discontinued in the sixties. Now it just sits there, trickling away, a monument to a near-forgotten saint.

Yesterday was a cold day, and to be honest I felt a little conspicuous standing at the well while other people looked at me suspiciously as they walked past or performed a three-point turn. I said a quick prayer for the people who lived around the well, and for those who’ll eventually live in the housing development that’s going to overlook it, and then I left for a quick mooch around the city.

I guess Alkmund’s Well is an example of how there’s more to the world than we see at first glance. A holy well can be found in the shadow of a tower block, and the distance between sacred and secular isn’t nearly as extensive as we may think. History lurks around every corner, the hidden stories of our towns and cities tucked away on street corners and on housing estates. You’ve just got to know where to look.

Cnut the Great and North Carolina

King Cnut the Great: ruler of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and England, despite his successes, his legacy (in the UK at least) was pretty much obscured by the Norman invasion of 1066 and the death of his son, King Harold. Nowadays he’s best known for his role in folklore.

The story goes that he put his throne on the beach and commanded the tide not to come in. Obviously he ended up getting his feet wet, and the tale gets interpreted in one of two ways – either the futility of arrogance or as a king going out of his way to show that you shouldn’t claim power that only belongs to God.

A thousand years later, North Carolina has proposed a law that would prevent the sea level from rising (or, at least, measuring it in an inconvenient way).

I can’t think why I’ve linked the two…

Happy Groundhog Day!

Today, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, a groundhog will emerge from hibernation. Hundreds of people will watch as he looks outside, for if he sees his own shadow, it means we’re in for another 40 days of winter.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in Serbia, a bear will also inspect the weather. If it’s sunny, he’ll sleep for another six weeks.

Elsewhere, in Portugal, Italy and the UK, old rhymes tell the same story – if the weather today is nice, then winter is sticking around.

We live in a scientific age. We’ve got satellites and meteorologists, we don’t need to hang around, waiting to see whether or not a groundhog gets freaked out by his own shadow. And yet the custom and its related folk wisdom are pretty widespread. Why is that?

Because there’s some truth in it. According to Wikipedia (I know, but I can’t find more scientific groundhog-related statistics right now, and besides, the whole point of this stuff is that it’s anecdotal), the custom correctly predicts the weather around 38% of the time, which actually isn’t that bad a hit rate for a rodent.

The theory goes that, if the groundhog can see his shadow then it’s probably a clear day and therefore probably colder; a mild day means more clouds and therefore spring is drawing closer. And yes, there are plenty of other variables but it’s not a bad rule of thumb.

A similar tradition exists in the UK around St. Swithin’s Day – if it rains on 15 July then there’ll be rain for the next 40 days as well. The rationale behind this is that the jet stream settles into a steady pattern around mid-July, and can therefore give a good indication for what the weather will be like for the next few weeks.

Sure, none of this is particularly scientific; it doesn’t matter. All this weather lore points to something else – Back in the day, being able to read nature was an important survival skill; now most of us are isolated from the natural world, armed with fridges and thermostats and streetlights. Of course we like the idea that a groundhog can predict the coming of spring; it brings us together with our communities and their traditions and forgotten knowledge.

And so I’m looking out my window and guessing it’ll be a longer winter. And I may well be wrong, but making the effort feels right as I look at the sunshine and feel the cold.