Helmintholog

Anyone needing proof that the IP system is horribly broken need look no further than here: the European Patent Office has invited me to a consultation in Munich in late April to bloviate on the strength of my piece in the Guardian last autumn denouncing software patents. I hope to learn something, too.

This being the EPO, they will fly me business class from the airport of my choice. So I thought I would be environmentally virtuous — and have a lot more fun — and take the train instead. I never have in fact travelled in Eurostar and good (ie non-British) trains are much more comfortable to work on than planes. They also stimulate more thought, becasue they pass through foreign countries rather than airports.

But when I look into it, the cheapest train tride I can get to Munich is £515 return, in second class; even Lufthansa is less than that (£453) and British Airways is £276. None of these air fares require that I share a couchette with strangers. If I want a first class train ride, it’s another couple of hundred pounds. I don’t feel I can stiff the Patent Office for more than a business class flight from Heathrow would cost. In the end I will probably end up flying coach from Stansted. It saves me about an hour’s travelling time each way, and the discomfort of a coach class seat is no greater than the discomfort of spending any time at all in Heathrow Airport. But I need to check that both flights would go to the same Munich airport (or Stockholm Munich, as Ryanair would call it).

The odd thing is that this has nothing much to do with deregulation, free markets, or anything like that. It is primarily a consequence of aviation fuel being tax-free, a purely political decision.

“Bach! Fuck, yeah yeah yeah” as the philosopher said. At 12.55 GMT, the BBC is showing live coverage of the Olympic ice hockey final. Even better, it stars Sweden and Finland. In each country, they will be preparing in their different traditional manners, the Swedes settling down with herring and six packs of beer, the Finns with their six packs of Vodka …

Sweden won, 3-2.

An excruciating experience last night: I had been to a rather grand lecture in one of the City churches, followed by a reception in a livery company’s hall. Really nice Californian wine, gravlax in the nibbles, and I felt I ought to justify myself by asking the lecturer a question. So I approached him, asked, and he drew breath for a long reply. As soon as he started speaking, and exhaling, I ducked my head, as if listening reverently but actually because I was enveloped in choking, miasmic halitosis. He was a very tall man, so his breath seemed to settle all round me wherever I stood within earshot. I remembered whole African villages silently wiped out by the poisonous exhalations of the volcanoes that stand above them. How could his best friend get close enough to tell him, I wondered, with my mouth clamped shut.

Blogging is not perhaps the answer to this social embarrassment, but what is?

Meanwhile, I picked up three juicy rumours. The two that are probably entirely untrue, are that the Bishop of London is to become the next Dean of Westminster; and that the Archbishop of Canterbury is sick of the job and will leave it after the next Lambeth conference. This last one has been officially and explicitly denied by Lambeth Palace, and so probably won’t be printed. I suppose it is entirely characteristic of rumour that I have forgotten the one that was undoubtedly true. In any case, it is of interest only to anoraks.