Isomorphisms of expectation

Resolutely stuck in the 1960s as I am, I recently watched yet another programme about the Great Train Robbery of August 1963. Concerned mostly with the identity of an alleged gang member who was never caught, the programme also discussed how the raid was carried out. One of the crucial requirements for the robbery to succeed was that the mail train needed to be halted at the precise point where the ambush was to take place, in rural Buckinghamshire. The gang lacked the technical knowledge to tinker with the railway signalling system. How then to stop the train? The solution, accredited to gang member Roger Cordrey, was to stuff a leather glove over the green signal, and rig up a battery-powered red lamp nearby. The train driver, speeding along in the dark, would see the red light and apply the brakes. He would assume that the red light was the signal; he had no reason to think otherwise. A signal, green or red, was what he was expecting to see. I’ve always considered this a clever, albeit criminal, illustration of lateral thinking.

Also recently, I’ve been attempting to watch the second series of “Hold the Sunset”, about which the only good things are the theme tune (“Have I The Right ?” by the Honeycombs) and fragments of pleasant Thames-side scenery around Richmond and Twickenham. This dire series has progressed from being merely negatively amusing to positively annoying. It’s so sad to see the long and illustrious career of John Cleese being tarnished by association with this dismal offering. However, thinking of Cleese in his former glory, and  in particular thinking of “Python”, for no very good reason I today recalled an episode first shown in December 1969, in other words almost half a century ago. Actually not featuring Cleese at all, this sketch concerns a psychopathic blood-crazed barber (Michael Palin) with his customer (Terry Jones). Wrestling with his own homicidal tendencies and with his customer settled in the chair, the Michael Palin character switches on a reel-to-reel tape recorder which plays typical barber shop conversations – about the weather, the football, etc – with suitable gaps for his customer to respond, and also the sound of scissors snipping away. Apart from the total absurdity of the situation the customer has no reason to suspect that the sounds he is hearing aren’t those of him having his hair cut. His expectations are anticipated … and fooled. An early outing in the direction of virtual reality, I suppose.

That is, until he susses the situation, and Palin famously confesses, “I didn’t want to be a barber anyway. I wanted to be a lumberjack”. And we know what comes next.

Detecting analogies, finding structural similarities, patterns, isomorphisms across apparently dissimilar situations can be a route to creativity, it can be a symptom of hypomania or schizophrenia, and it can be extremely tiresome. But I wonder: the fake railway signal, the fake barbering sounds. There’s some sort of deep level similarity going on, but whether it’s worth anything, well, who knows. Are there other parallels to be unearthed in other walks of life, in other created works? I really don’t know. I never wanted to be a blogger anyway. I wanted to be a logger, leaping from tree to tree as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia … The giant redwood, the larch … 

And that’s probably quite enough for one very warm Bank Holiday Monday.