It seems that my employer is considering a change of image. So, perhaps soon we will see the back of the subdued dark green and burgundy which reportedly appear 'unapproachable' and 'complacent'. In their place, new vibrant hues reflecting dynamism and progress. Perhaps the council should really push the boat out and invest in an ever changing coruscation of colours reflecting the current mood and status of its services - a real-time 'key performance indicator' for the information-on-demand age?

This got me thinking again about the corporate insignia - what future does it have, and more pressingly - what really is it?

The emblem - commonly referred to as a Dragon by most employees has its origins in the arms of the County of Somerset. Granted in 1911, the blazon of the arms is 'Or, a Dragon Rampant Gules holding in the claws a Mace erect Azure'. So, it is indeed a 'Golden Dragon'- heraldic splendour hijacked by the chinese takeaway? A battered version of this emblem, the mace cruelly truncated, can still be seen on the Magistrates' Court building in Weston-super-Mare, close by the new, stylised North Somerset flag. Risking an Anti-social Behaviour Order, you could throw a stone from the Town Hall to the courthouse.


Others, who have little better to do than consider such things, refer to the emblem as a Gryphon. These mythical mongrels are 'beasts like lions, with the wings and beak of an eagle' according to Pausanias. It is perhaps hard to make the case for the Gryphon (or Griffin) as the figure bears little resemblance to a lion in any respect, and clearly sports a lizard-like tongue placing it firmly outside the realm of birds.

Having ruled out the Gryphon, I note that locally, the Wyvern too is a common name for schools and businesses. This 'fabulous two-legged, winged creature, like a cockatrice, but having the head of a dragon, and without spurs' is usually depicted with a long, barbed tail which it bears in a knot. This casts some doubt on the heraldic description of Somerset County's arms - as the creature depicted is almost certainly a Wyvern, a dragon being a four-legged beast. However, Somerset's mace-wielding monster clearly wears spurs. If we accept that this odd heraldic hybrid is a wyvern, it would go some way to explaining the use of the word locally in Weston and elsewhere in the existing and former county areas.

To solve the mystery however, heraldry is our only hope. North Somerset's unusually rightward facing (and therefore 'forward looking') insignia has no legs whatsoever. In heraldry, a dragon without feet is a Serpent.

So, is the Serpent a fitting emblem for our council? It seems to preserve our historic links with Somerset, and beyond to ancient legend. It is said to be 'forward looking', which I think most of my colleagues at least, seem to be. However, its worth remembering that a serpent is also 'a subtle, treacherous, malicious person'. You know who you are!

Links:

Pimbley's Directory of Heraldry
Gryphon Pages
Celebrating Somerset - The Coat of Arms
Somerset County Council
North Somerset Council

For what its worth, the appeal season at work is almost officially over. One or two stragglers which need to be sorted, but mostly its been a successful year for our team. Naturally, parents denied access to their chosen school would never agree, but I think that in almost every case a fair and just decision has been made. I'm struck again and again that I'd never want the job of panel member - difficult decisions, emotional parents and terrified presenting officers. Not inspiring stuff is it?

Tonight, the oddly evangelical Open Source bandwagon jumping movie Antitrust aired on British TV for the first time. The fact that it appeared on Channel 5 which has notoriously bad reception even via DST meant that I completely missed Miguel's cameo. Never mind. Strange film, not entirely bad, but a bit uncomfortable.

Strangely irritable and frustrated tonight, possibly due to the strange time of year, the complicated and confusing week I'm having, and veiled accusations of electronic tomfoolery. I remember what an oddly anticlimactic time it was last year. Lots of effort expended on a short burst of intensive activity. Fixing my sights on a possible further attempt on the Fishguard Class 37 at the weekend, and the upcoming conference.

Finally finished the various additions to Inkblot, a GNOME printer ink level tool, based on libinklevel.

Inkblot lives in the notification area and gives a 'traffic-light' indication of overall ink level status. Clicking the icon gives more detail in the form of a dialog, and this can be expanded if your printer supports reporting on each colour reservoir. Inkblot should detect your printer automatically.

Right now, I only have a tarball of the release - attempts to make the necessary packages of libinklevel will follow. You can download Inkblot here:

inkblot-0.99.5.tar.gz

...as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know.

D H Rumsfeld (1932-)

Still a bit surprised at the strength of my reaction to Paignton yesterday. Dug back through old versions of this site on The Internet Archive to find I described my last visit as "the strangest weekend of my life". Particularly remember a muggy, thunderous Easter Monday. Sitting on a bench in Victoria Park looking at a ship at anchor in Torbay, wishing I hadn't eaten a breakfast which was now fighting my attempts to digest it. I also remember walking feverishly around the bus station, and alongside the tracks toward the level crossing and Goodrington Sidings in order to find a usable mobile phone signal to try to fix the mess I'd made of things. Then, a speedy dash back home on the train because I'd realised what a bad idea it was to go to Paignton in the first place! All the way back I worried about who would help me get a decent shirt for my Election photograph. Strange days indeed, and who'd have thought they would stay so vividly with me four years later.

I suppose I'm more sensitive to 'place' than I ever thought, which is perhaps manifested in the attraction I have to Peter Ackroyd's ideas of 'privileged space'. All sorts of strange questions and wonderings rattling around my head this past couple of days as a result of that trip, and the strange coincidences that follow. Fact is, I thought I knew what I wanted - or at least what I thought I didn't want. Perhaps its all much simpler than I thought, and I in fact don't have any self-awareness at all? At times like this, Mr Rumsfeld worryingly begins to make sense.

Achieved quite a bit today. Major tidying exercise in anticipation of flat inspection. Also added the missing bits of the Inkblot puzzle. I ought to give it some sort of useful home on this site, rather than expecting prospective users to wade through my dirty laundry to find a link! I also, rather excitingly, invented a way to stuff a duvet into its cover which didn't take me 20 minutes and result in near-tearful bouts of frustration.

Combined with the relative success of the last couple of weeks at work, I feel sort of 'on course' for something - not entirely sure what, but its more comfortable than any of the alternatives I'm sure. Looking ahead now to my upcoming London trip.

Loyal readers will remember when all the daylog entries were as self-obsessed, painfully trite, and pointlessly oblique as this one. Call it an Independence Day special!