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August 15th; Thursday. A 1970s conference suggested a cashless society would be the perfect surveillance state.

August 14th; Wednesday. A video from the (mostly) new Brasilia of Kazakhstan, Astana, showing off its Sinbad-inspired fascistic modernism, vaguely humanised by a dancing girl. Rumour is the new capital has an almost unbearable climate, with one or two references to an annual season of blood-sucking midges the size of bluebottles. I also heard Kazakhs eat boiled or fried puppies, but mustn't be churlish. Nice video. As for dance moves: :::
August 13th; Tuesday. The voice of the by-then-elderly Florence Nightingale, from 1905.

August 12th; Monday. Travel back into Budapest on what Gyuri promises, as he drives me to Kunszentmarton train station, is going to be a kanikula/caniculae day, over 100 degrees Farenheit. In Kunszentmarton, I meet Aranka's contact Editke in the fabric shop and we look at various pieces of cloth together. The train journey itself is hot enough to change sides of the carriage every time the shady side shifts. At Szolnok station, leaving myself ample time for the transfer, I walk down the long white cement tunnel going under all the tracks to get to platform 16. These are of course, in order away from the 60s modernist station, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16. Obviously. If this was a 19th-century British station Guardian readers would blame this kind of illogicality on tradition. On Britain missing out on a proper bourgeois revolution, of which Hungary is unlucky enough to have suffered at least four. Once I am relaxed and waiting at the last platform I see there is a view across at least another ten tracks. New grass vigorously grows between them, but the shine on the rails shows they are all in use. Then a line of parked empty carriages hiding the horizon. Above this only some sort of white-painted gas/silo fractionation-type tower rises sci-fi-style into a blue sky. Almost like looking out to sea. A Hungarian man politely asks if this is the right platform for the Budapest train. I say yes and - whoops! - he is able to smoothly move in with the next question, about "how I see" the next 3 or 4 years unfolding. He is angling for some kind of catastrophist view of current events, and I say yes another bourse crash but no matter, and no, no climate apocalypse. Doggedly the poor man, obviously a Jehovah's Witness by now, soldiers on and asks me about the book of Daniel and the kingdom of God. I say I favour Augustine's view that the city of saints is outside time and space. A very tiny twitch of irritation here gives him away, but he maintains his calm wheedling sales patter, and we finally compromise on a leaflet and part in peace. Later in the afternoon, having handed a basket of 24 eggs over to Robin at one of Budapest's grand railway termini, I meet a new student who is going abroad soon to study ceramics.
August 11th; Sunday. It seems that yesterday Jeffrey Epstein, he of the private island, private jumbo jet, and parties full of very young girls for celebrity guests, killed himself yesterday in his cell in a maximum-security prison. It appears he was taken off suicide watch (despite an apparent earlier attempt a week ago), his cellmate was removed, and the CCTV cameras were switched off. As one wag on the internet jested "If you were surprised that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself yesterday, just imagine how surprised he must have been!" Hur hur.

August 10th; Saturday. An intriguingly odd discussion of human/machine merging from the eccentric perspective of Rudolf Steiner followers.
August 9th; Friday. I go from Robin's farmhouse to see Seamstress Aranka in the next village Tiszakurt, unfortunately accompanied by Siegfried, the grandson of the komondor sheepdog Lupus or Lupi, appropriately enough, since he was a bit loopy. Siegfried's mother Sissi died just a couple of months ago, leaving the grandmother Domor, Lupi's widow, as the senior hound. The current foxterrier also died some weeks back this spring, so the doggy social milieu at Robin's is a little altered. It's a hot, airless day, and I go to the next village on foot, equipped with large straw hat and sun-blocking cream. Parts of the garden wall collapsed some months now, replaced with not-so-effective wire netting. Knowing the ways through, Siegfried suddenly pops up next to me on the walk once I'm about ten minutes into the journey, refusing to go home. He has no collar or leash. He looks and acts like a pale labrador that's had a bang on the head. None of the aggression of his grandfather, just a good-natured streak of daft curiosity and stubbornness. We get onto the main road and it's clear he has never seen large vans or lorries before. He actually hides from each one in the ditch as it passes, clearly seeing them as more menacing than the cars. He goes up to each barking dog in each garden to say hello, but never barks back at them. We reach Aranka's and she has finally mended my stuff. She and her family are a bit nonplussed that I'm with a dog that has no leash, and their cuddly mongrel Dumpling, tied to his post, is upset about this too. Wilting somewhat in the heat we hide in the shade of a bus shelter, and magically one of the only 2 or 3 buses a day arrives to save us, 3 minutes behind schedule. I talk the driver into letting us board the packed vehicle, and I crouch on the steps holding the hound while passengers discuss the whole conundrum of a dog without a collar in the company of a funny foreigner in straw hat etc. We get to Tiszainoka, and a villager fishes a long ribbon in the German colours out of his parked car, and expertly fashions a collar with slipknot and loop for me to hold at the other end. We pop this on the astonished Siegfried (the man teasingly mentioning he gave me a lift a year ago, and I'd forgotten him) and the small group of locals agree that order has been restored. I walk the final 15 minutes with the hound, confused and unhappy at being tethered to a person, a whole new experience for him. Siegfried has reluctantly got used to the leash by the time he & I return to the farmhouse, triumphantly bearing my blue bag that Aranka has magnificently repaired at a very modest price, albeit taking about four months. I can leave Robin's basketwork hamper case at the house now.

August 8th; Thursday. Going straight from my lesson with Esoteric Veronica, I catch a train down to Robin's place on the flat, sun-baked Great Plain by the Tisza river. Two (I think deliberately) Bond-themeish Goldfrapp tunes: Pilots and Lovely Head.
August 7th; Wednesday. Surprisingly interesting and even-handed BBC web article about hysterical Malaysian schoolgirls. Though this is from a heavily Islamic region, comparisons with other religions suggests that strict moralistic governing of adolescent girls might be a factor in mass crazes of screaming, fainting, heeby-geebies etc. Perhaps the Beeb should evolve into a long-format paper/web magazine like the Atlantic, and give up on the broadcasting.

August 6th; Tuesday. On my way back to Budapest for a lesson with Esoteric Veronica, I finish Michael O'Sullivan's book about the 1934 adventures of Patrick Leigh Fermor: Noble Encounters Between Budapest and Transylvania, an English traveller across Europe. With an elegaic tone, O'Sullivan traces Leigh Fermor's journey on foot from chateau to chateau across the Hungarian-speaking parts of Eastern Europe with evident pleasure. At the same time his regret at how so many of those grand families were later brought low under communism is just as sincere. Small black-and-white photographs like those in Sebald novels add to the other-worldly mood, romantically recalling the grace & taste of vanished aristocracy.
August 5th; Monday. Zsuzsa's mount strides around us looking glossy & elegant while Zeno the Alchemist, Bela, Gyuri and I take items from the car in the late-afternoon sun. It's parked round by the seed & grain store area next to the chicken coops. The big chestnut-coloured horse Solero seems to genuinely want to help us unload groceries out of the small car, but has not much idea what to do in practice so strolls around a bit, getting in the way. Later in the kitchen, I find Bela, supervised by Zeno, injecting dozens of doses of strong schnapps into a melon using a 5-millilitre syringe.

August 4th; Sunday. More rain outside all day. Read a 1983 picture book I found in a bedroom at Robin's house on the Great Plain, 'Kozep-Azsiai Muveszete Avicenna Koraban' (Central Asian Art in the time of Avicenna) by Lutfija Ajni, E. Guljamova, Karolyn Gombos, G. Verhovskij, and translated into Hungarian by Ilona Kovanecz from what I assume is Russian. That's judging from the original title, written as 'Iszkussztvo szrednyej Azii epohi Avicennu Izdatyeltszvo "Irfon"'. The text is thorough, explaining what was going on politically & culturally in parts of Central Asia around the year 1000 AD. During the lifetime of the brilliant poet, medical physician, and philosopher Ibn Sina - Latinised to Avicenna - much was occurring in what by the 1980s (when this book was produced) were still Muslim republics of the Soviet Union. Pictures a little disappointing, though some are beautiful, or at least show an object which seems to be beautiful even if the picture of it isn't. Some photos of the fragments of arch from vanished mausoleums or collapsed mosques have a look-upon-the-works-of-Ozymandias feeling. A few bits of thousand-year-old tile or brick work are still striking. The overall impression from the history text in the book is of a region, era, and religious system so violent and despotic that it was no surprise the period's handful of bright individuals like Avicenna left little long-term trace in the culture they were unlucky enough to be born into. Avicenna himself moved home several times and spent time in prison for political reasons. In the early evening Artist Robin arrives from the big city, and we bounce ideas around until late as usual.
August 3rd; Saturday. Last night slept 15 hours. Outside dark and rains all day. Today read a picture book from Robin's library, 'Sufi: Expressions of the Mystic Quest' by Laleh Bakhtiar. The illustrations are wonderful, and some consist of large, clear, whole-page pieces of black-and-white calligraphy, perhaps the single most impressive craft in Islamic culture. While pictorially wonderful, some of the text is confusing, often providing a minimalistic, laconic reference to some intriguing giant diagram of Sufi concepts which diagram is mysterious, pretty, but leaves rather a lot still unexplained. For example, there is a fabulous wheel taking up page 62 representing stations of the moon, along with signs of the zodiac, each of the Arabic letters, and handy categories like 'The 4th Heaven, The Sun, Abode of Hermes' or on another spoke, more simply 'The Hidden'. No clue what's going on there. Fifty pages later a similarly baffling section has some rather lovely magic squares doing arithmetic with the names of Allah (eg, if Allah is 66, that name can therefore = 21 + 26 + 19, or 20 + 22 + 24, or 25 + 18 + 23 : and so on). More methodical commentary in more detail would hugely improve this visually lush book. Solero strides around in the garden Biblically, chewing horse-chestnut branches within reach. Apparently he is in his new paradise because he's killed no fewer than three lambs out in the meadow by charging the flock and taking out his frustration or boredom on straggling youngsters. Hence he now potters about outside the house, sniffing the fruit trees as if in a picture of Adam naming the beasts.

August 2nd; Friday. Interesting article comparing the search for partners by men & women to two separate economies, with very different degrees of inequality. Catch train. Uneventful trip out into the Great Plain of rural Hungary. The leggy serving lass at Szolnok station looks tired, snappy, blank-faced of late. After dark find Zeno the Alchemist & Peter K., his & Robin's artist friend, smoking quietly at a small table on the verandah, sheltered by foliage, rain pouring down 3 or 4 feet away.
August 1st; Thursday. Seems I got quoted in a Breitbart piece.

July 31st; Wednesday. Strange, thought-provoking piece about an entire century-old underground-railway system (under Cincinnati) which never got used. Apparently even the tracks were laid.
July 30th; Tuesday. Hot sun. Finish book borrowed from Michael A., 'The Closing of the American Mind' by Allan Bloom, describing what he thinks has gone wrong with humanities teaching at universities. His focus of course is the US, and this was written in the 1980s. I've been meaning to read it since I saw the Nigel of Light with a copy years ago. However, it's even more topical now. An excellent read, perhaps the best thing I've read for a year. Bloom addresses how college students and the culture they're brought up in has changed since the 1950s, he traces a range of European intellectual influences on US humanities teaching over the decades of the 20th century, and he has some fascinating personal anecdotes about anti-Vietnam demonstrations on campuses in the 1960s along with the involvement of black power groups in those university sit-ins. The chapter on classical & pop music alone is worth reading the book for.

July 29th; Monday. Slightly unfair April article about the old tweets of a new 24-year-old National Union of Students president. In these she proclaimed she "wants to oppress white people". Given she was 17 when she wrote that, it should perhaps be overlooked. Her current views might be obnoxious enough, but plenty of people say silly things while still adolescent.
July 28th; Sunday. Overview of Lebanese artist whose sensual, body-centred artworks might be coming into fashion after decades of relative neglect.

July 27th; Saturday. Shortly before the lesson with Boardgame Orsolya, I finish the book I bought in the departure lounge at Heathrow Sunday before last, which I've been meaning to read for years: 'Moonwalking with Einstein' by Joshua Foer. Nicely written, a little unkind in one or two places about the people he meets, but overall sensible, encouraging, and inspiring. Cleverly helps make amazing enhancements of the mind seem more credible, feasible, and worthwhile. A journalist interviews a memory-champion competitor, refuses to believe competitors have normal memories improved by tricks, and ends up spending a year (coached by his original interview subject) training for a memory competition himself to test the claim.
July 26th; Friday. Nazi scientists tried to train talking dogs, says 2011 article. Icelandic anthropologist asserts in 2016 that elves are real.

July 25th; Thursday. Swathe of euro-weasels lose their Cabinet posts as Boris Johnson, great grandson of an admirable-sounding Turkish politician (briefly Ottoman Minister of the Interior in 1919), becomes Tory leader.
July 24th; Wednesday. Two articles about alleged Jew-hatred inside the Labour party: a quite brave mea culpa from one former participant; and the rather wonderful thought that Ken Loach might be sued by a journalist he criticised.

July 23rd; Tuesday. Elon Musk opens up about plan to wire people into the internet. Of course, he adds, "This is not a mandatory thing. It's something to have if you want." Increasingly difficult not to see Musk and his clutch of loss-making businesses as a sort of tame technologist/guru/entrepreneur/kite-flyer for, and funded by, the US deep state.
July 22nd; Monday. Are men intimidated by highly educated women? Seemingly no. Two researchers say that men don't select for education in women partners, but nor do they select against it.

July 21st; Sunday. Kai Fu-Lee is a Chinese engineer originally from Taiwan (the "rebel province") now based in Peking. He suggests China will overtake the US in artificial intelligence (AI), but warns AI systems will never be minds.
July 20th; Saturday. A celebrated present-day thinker who is Korean but writes in German, Byung-Chul Han discusses privacy, social media, and self-exploitation. Unfortunately, since he studied philosophy in Germany, he's been contaminated with Hegelianism, uses giveaway terms like 'neoliberalism', and thinks there's a thing called 'capitalism'. Hence although it's interesting he's writing and thinking about these topics at all - doesn't feel like he has anything original to say about them, but I haven't read his 16 books. Here he is on "the Hell Where Everything's the Same".

July 19th; Friday. Two songs by Kimbra. The disarmingly honest and tense Settle Down, and a self-critical Top of the World.
July 18th; Thursday. Esoteric Veronica tells me during our lesson that one of her grandfathers, a restauranteur round about World War 2, gambled away his wife in a poker game. This wasn't Veronica's grandmother: he married 5 times, she explains. Meanwhile, a handy guide to finding white witches in northern Poland; sad tale of Tory pro-EU rebel MP Anna Soubry losing faith in Mr Chuka; Guardian cartoonist goes supernova when his pro-Palestinian cartoons get censored; British government announces country's highest exports ever.

July 17th; Wednesday. Smoking "scars" your DNA.
July 16th; Tuesday. Journalist wears music-activated 'device' to night club.

July 15th; Monday. An equation supposedly predicting the end of humanity. Underpins Nick Bostrom's rather dotty simulation argument.
July 14th; Sunday. A very jolly Polish lady driver takes me to Heathrow for my flight back. My journey is seemingly shadowed by someone else in the TV production called Omar. I never meet Omar, but I find his driver outside the hotel in London, waiting to go to a different airport terminal. On arrival in Budapest an anxious driver there at the airport straight away asks me if I am Omar. Once back in the Big Pogacsa I drop by Simon's flat where he and Robin are watching the nail-biting England/New-Zealand cricket match projected onto his sitting-room wall. Slightly startled to notice the England team are playing in face cages and baby-blue pyjamas with a white cricket ball and black screens. Then Terri & Alvi & I dine together at a Thai eatery, where we talk about low-budget feature films, cricket, psychological drama, Tunbridge Wells, weird parasites, and prophetic short stories.

July 13th; Saturday. I oversleep (due to getting no call times the previous day) but everyone is very nice about it. Driven into Westminster, I find I must get out of a black taxi driven by the lady-taxi-driver actress's amiable body double. We do this on camera four times, and am told then at 9 in the morning my work was great and I can go. Sleep a couple of hours in my Keats-carpeted bedroom, then spend most of the afternoon hanging around in the basement of the hotel basement with some genial extras. I eat some fruit and more cakelets. An effort to find a charity shop selling 2nd-hand clothes south of Waterloo around 6.30pm fails. Last night finished Paul's copy of 'The Strange Death of Europe' by Douglas Murray: moderately, carefully argued, full of interesting interviews with refugees coming into Europe.
July 12th; Friday. Catch a plane in Budapest to get to London so as to play my small role as rude taxi passenger again. A charming but gloomy-looking man from Kosovo drives me from Heathrow to a rather swish hotel across a bridge from the Houses of Parliament. The cheerful make-up-and-hair ladies let me snaffle some darling cakelets seemingly abandoned outside their cosmetics den in the bowels of the hotel. The carpets in corridors and rooms upstairs have a curious design: an orangey tandoori sort of colour with the words of Keats' poem Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl! set into the carpet in yellowy-cream cursive italic. A block of text doing this poem twice recurs every couple of yards. Sweet idea for a hotel carpet, really.

July 11th; Thursday. Finish Paul's copy of the 1975 book 'Biology of God' by Alister Hardy. He was a marine biologist involved at an Oxford college with research into people's reports of religious experiences. Hardy proposes that some higher moral sense of togetherness (perhaps some richer kind of telepathic communication across a tribe) was of evolutionary advantage for early humans. He's quite careful and thoughtful in summing up various positions on science-versus-faith.
July 10th; Wednesday. Nicely restrained song Why Don't You from Cleo Sol. On the other hand, Amber Mark and Lose My Cool.

July 9th; Tuesday. Interesting attempt to claim the great Tunisian historiographer Ibn Khaldun as an early economist centuries ahead of his time. Suggesting he anticipates both Smith and Keynes rather torpedoes the idea before it even gets going though. Still, I ought to check Khaldun myself.
July 8th; Monday. Psychiatric diagnoses meaningless? Not a complete surprise.

July 7th; Sunday. Brave firm reviews 3 ways (it says) to raise IQ. Not quite how I remember modafinil, but never mind.
July 6th; Saturday. Two tunelets from the adorably named "Young Rascals", many moons ago. Feast your eyes on that green-satin-shirt-plus-waistcoat combination on tambourine man. Then another from the following year, again with some mighty outfits but noticeably more post-suit.

July 5th; Friday. Curious research result that immune cells, the little tinkers, invade brain tissue over time. This is not a good thing, say men with clipboards.
July 4th; Thursday. Pick up document from the FCO. Ja! My papers are in order!

July 3rd; Wednesday. 40 years on, China repeating Japan's Fifth Generation mistake.
July 2nd; Tuesday. Trudge over to new British Embassy location up bright, sunny 11 bus route on Fig street for my "emergency travel document" for July's filming. No! Is not so simple, my friend! Later find Theology Andras & two of his brothers, before a lovely dinner of steak on hot stone in small town just outside Budapest. We touch on Jaynes and Sulloway, among other coffee-fuelled topics.

July 1st; Monday. The day (July 1st) one Hungarian colleague told me one year that summer was already over. Prizewinning example of looking on the bright side. Meanwhile, even a single exercise session helps brain cells.

Recent weblog entries continued:

Who can translate the next 300 words into Korean or Hindi? Contact us and there will be revelry.

Languages dying out each week - who cares?