Alan Turing and Bletchley Park

When I was in the UK, I made a special visit to Bletchley Park. This was part-research for a percolating book-idea, but mostly I went there for wholesome nerdy awesome. And Bletchley delivered.

Ever since I read Neal Stevenson's Cryptonomicon I've wanted to visit Bletchley Park. It's an hour and a bit out of London, and there's a fascinating (and pleasingly lofi) series of museums and things there, including the National Museum of Computing. Also, Ian Fleming used to work there as a gopher, and obviously got some good spy-related ideas because he ended up writing some books that became quite popular.

I meant it when I said lo-fi

Bletchley Park was a code-breaking centre during WW2. It was where a very intelligent man called Alan Turing broke the Enigma Machine - a contraption for encoding messages used by the Germans. It looks like this:

Working at Bletchley Park involved lots of TOP SECRET things, and you couldn't get in or out without a special pass. There were also lots of women who worked there, because working on code-breaking and other surveillancey things was a good way for women to be involved in the war without having to put on special pants and actually go and kill people. And some of those women had kids who had to go to school. So even the kids needed the special pass to get in and out of the Park. These kids were the youngest people ever to sign the Official Secrets Act.

So let's talk about Alan Turing. The good news is that he invented something (called a Turing machine) that ended up evolving into the machine I'm typing this on right now. His use of electronic calculation and algorithming was what enabled the British to break the Enigma machine.

Time Magazine declared Turing as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century, and said: "the fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."

Now here's the bad news. Alan Turing was gay (that bit wasn't the bad news, it's coming next). And during his lifetime, homosexuality was illegal and thought of as a mental illness. Turing was prosecuted in 1952. He had a choice between going to jail or taking female hormone treatment to "cure" him. His security clearance was removed and he was no longer permitted to work for the government. In 1954 he killed himself by eating an apple laced with cyanide.

BUT, on September 10 2009, after a recent petition endorsed by Richard Dawkins and Ian McEwan, the British government officially apologised to Turing. Here's what Gordon Brown said:

While Mr Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him... So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better. (full statement here)

Which is awesome and encouraging and only 55 years overdue.

This was from a totally awesome exhibit titled PIGEONS IN WAR. Did you know some pigeons got bravery medals?

Here are some Real Live Boffins working on a Very Old Computer.

And more good news - for the first time ever, Bletchley Park is going to receive National Lottery Funding, so it won't have to just survive on donations any more. Hurrah!

Anyway, I totally recommend a visit. And if you want to read more, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is a great read that blends all sorts of computery code-breakingly nerdery into one awesome novel.

Whisky

In Edinburgh we went to the Scotch Whisky Experience, which is sort of like a tour/ride about Whisky*. And apart from the fact that I like whisky, it was just a REALLY well-designed tour/exhibition. Probably one of the best I went on**.

First you get to go on a BARREL RIDE where a ghost tells you all about how whisky is made. it is very complicated and involves squishing a lot of barley together to make a fermented mash, and then adding yeast and doing lots of distilling.

The Ghost:

And learn also about the barrels they mature the whisky in. 90% of Scotch barrels are first used in the US to make bourbon, and the other 10% are used first to make sherry. So they're all nommy and flavoury. Then sometimes they set them on fire for a little bit for a more caramelly taste, then put in the WHISKY. Because they're not airtight, the whisky breathes and matures... and evaporates. You lose 2% in 3 years, or 40% in 30 years. They say this evaporated whisky is for the angels.

Then you go and watch a video about all the different whisky regions, and a tour guide comes and talks about them all. And you get four little jars to represent the four main regions: Speyside, Islay, Highlands and Lowlands. Each jar contains some of the smells that you might find in each region's whisky. Lowlands is biscuity and vanilla-ish. Speyside is fruity, like pears. Highlands is sweet like heather and honey. Islay (which is a teeny island off the West Coast of Scotland) is smoky and peaty and by far MY FAVOURITE. So once you've picked your favourite, they pour you a glass of it and teach you how to taste it. There are five steps:

1. First you look at the colour. If it is a pale gold it was matured in a bourbon barrel. If it is darker it was a sherry barrel.

2. Then you swirl it around and look carefully to see how many teeny bubbles form and how fast the "legs" run down the sides of the glass. This indicates whether the whisky is full-bodied or light-bodied.

3. Then you nose the whiskey. This is the most important part because your nose recognises 40 different flavours, whereas your mouth only recognises 4 (actually there's some debate about whether there's a 5th but we didn't talk about that)

4. Then you put some of the whisky in your mouth, but don't swallow. This is the palate.

5. Finally you swallow it and think about the finish. The sweeter lighter whiskys have a flavour that disappears really quickly. The smokier heavier ones stay around for ages. Mine lasted over half an hour.

It all sounds very wankerish, but it was excellent fun. Then we went into this room which houses the biggest collection of whiskys in the world (this photo is only a fraction, it was impossible to photograph as it went round many corners):

This was my favourite: Inebriated Newt.

And then there was ANOTHER room with rare bottlings and wacky cases. Each one of these chess pieces is a small bottle of whisky - all together it makes up the volume of a normal sized bottle. The idea is every time you take an opponant's piece, you get to drink the contents.

And finally this is Peat, the whisky distillery cat.

We got to keep our special whisky nosing glasses, and then we were shown into the shop where we could buy the nommy whiskys for our VERY OWN.

*in case you are wondering, it's whisky if it's Scottish, and whiskey if it's Irish.

**Dear Underage Readers of this Blog: pls don't take this as encouragement to go out and get drunk. If for no other reason, a good single malt is VERY expensive and it would be a total waste of money.

Wales

I spent a lovely week in Wales with the wondrous @snazzydee, where we traipsed around, went swimming in the OCEAN, ate many tasty foods and drank many tasty wines. Here were the highlights, and my recommendations should you ever happen to find yourself in the Land of No Vowels But Very High Scrabble Scores.

1. Hay on Wye, the town with more bookshops than streets. Eat at The Old Black Lion (try the house ale) and stay at The Bear (make sure you have the bacon with breakfast).

Tenby: One of the absolute highlights of my UK trip. Tenby is a beautiful old walled seaside town. I know that Australians get pretty cocky about our beaches and it's true - our beaches are pretty awesome. But we generally don't have ruined castles on our beaches:

Here is were Snazzy and I went swimming in beautiful clear water that was SO COLD I THOUGHT I MIGHT DIE.

But my very favourite thing about Tenby is the CRAZY TIDES. Here is a photo of low tide, followed by a photo of the exact same place, two hours later.

I am bursting to set a novel there.

Eat at the Plantagenet. Amazing. Try the mussels.

Aberaeron: Lovely little Aberaeron is a fishing village in Southwest Wales. It also has crazy tides. Stay at the Harbour Master for both food and sleeping. Make sure you try the laver bread with your full cooked breakfast (confusingly not bread at all - it's a sort of seaweed and oat rissole that is much, much tastier than it sounds).

I cannot particularly recommend Brecon (sorry, Brecon), but about 10 minutes outside town (towards Hay) is the Felin Fach Griffin, a lovely old inn that has fabulous food, amazing wine lists and a dessert called a Chocolate Nemesis that might kill you, but it'll be worth it.

Other things that were strange and wonderful in Wales:

1. Snazzy's satnav took us on some very random roads, one of which had some spectacular views and a giant standing stone.

2. We did a hasty U-turn and backtracked in order to see this decrepit old playground.

3. This isn't actually in Wales, it's in Much Wenlock near Shrewsbury. Much Wenlock is the home of the modern Olympic Games (yep, it really is), because they used to hold the Much Wenlock Games (based on the Ancient Olympics). And some American came by one day and went "Golly, that's a good idea. What if we did this, but bigger?". It's a very cute town with a ruined abbey and streets with names like:

...which contain cute little stone houses with names like:

Hmm. Snazzy and I stared at this for about two minutes before we were convinced it was real.

If you happen to find yourself in Much Wenloch, stay and eat at The Raven.

Lindisfarne Castle

Between Hadrian's Wall and Edinburgh, we stopped at Lindisfarne Castle, because it was on the way. I went to a few castles and Stately Homes on this trip (including Melbourne Hall), and found them all a bit stuffy and boring. Lots of ugly furniture and mouldy curtains and you could just tell that all the nobility that had ever lived there were deeply boring. Lindisfarne is different.

It's this insane castle that's only tenuously connected to the land by a road that you can only use for a few hours a day because the ocean covers it the rest of the time.

The castle was built in 1600-and-something as a fort to defend england from VIKINGS and SCOTS. This bit of the story is boring - it's all ONLY SOUTH FACING HARBOUR ON THE EAST COAST blah blah ROMAN ROADS etc etc.

BUT in 1910, it was purchased by the man who founded House and Garden Magazine, in order to show off to his friends. He hired a rather innovative Edwardian architect who renovated the fort into the current castle, with cosy little rooms with marvellous views, and then got a gardener called Gertrude Jekyll to make a cute little walled garden. Then Mr House and Garden bought lots of fancy old furniture (which was really cheap as everyone was getting rid of their old stuff at that time to buy clean streamlined modern stuff). And then he got all his awesome bohemian friends to come over for summer where they hung out and practiced the cello and drank a lot. It sounds AWESOME. It had so much more character than the Stately British Homes we've visited, and for some reason because it belonged to someone who was "new money" and not ye olde nobility, I'm much more pleasantly disposed to him. I suppose because I can safely assume he wasn't as utterly tediously boring as the British nobility. Anyway, despite the driving rain it was WIN.

Castle:

Castle from "beach":

Scary road that goes over ocean floor: