Inherited aptitude in logical thinking

Over the last few days, I've been insisting upon a new belief: Most of my major interests and skills were surely picked up by reading. But I believe there's one exception: my alleged aptitude (call it an obsession, if you like) in logical reasoning. I'm convinced that it helped me, in an IQ test, to be considered as a perfect candidate for a job as an IBM computer programmer. Well, I happen to observe a capability in mathematical logic in a line of recent Skyvington ancestors.

• My charming ancestor named Frank Skyvington [1845-1916] was no doubt reacting to a taste for unusually rigorous logic when he decided that his two deceased wives should be buried in the same tomb.

• His crazy son William "Courtenay" Skyvington [1868-1959] used his aptitude for logical thinking to confirm that it was rather easy to behave as a scoundrel. His operations as a con-man were based upon the application of rigorous logic.

• My grandfather Ernest Skyvington [1891-1985] used smart logical subterfuges to abandon his unpleasant childhood universe of London and start a new existence in the Antipodes. He even used his skills in logical reasoning to escape from the threat of being killed as a soldier.

• My father "Bill" Skyvington [1917-1978] used smart logical thinking to acquire his first agronomic property and to join the war effort in an acceptable manner. His most ingenious statement of poetic logic was when he tricked me in a mild way (I was about 15) by suggesting that his bush paddock was in fact his personal "cathedral".

That last incident had a profound lasting effect upon me. More than anything else, Dad's statement led me here to Gamone... where I look constantly upon the giant Cournouze mountain as my spiritual "bride", my Joan of Arc.

If anybody were to imagine a similarity between "Cournouze" and "Courtenay", I would be obliged to say that it's a pure coincidence.

Permanent imprint

On 9 January 2015, this printing-house at Dammartin-en-Goële in the French countryside (Seine-et-Marne) made an unforgettable impression upon TV-viewers throughout the world. It was the arena of a spectacular standoff between police sharpshooters and two defiant brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, perpetrators of the murders at Charlie Hebdo in Paris on 7 January 2015.

The battered building has been totally renovated. The sparkling premises were inaugurated this morning by François Hollande.

Trying to find ancestors who made me smart

A few days ago, I was trying to solve the enigma of a charming ancestor named Frank Skyvington [1845-1916] whose son named William Skyvington [1868-1959] turned out to be a scoundrel. I kept saying to myself that it was strange to find a father and his son who were clearly so different. Why did this madness appear suddenly, before disappearing just as suddenly. I searched around intensely on the web to find an explanation of the ways in which chromosomes of madness might suddenly come into existence, maybe introduced by a baby’s mother. But every article I found on this genetic question was prefaced, as it were, by a huge warning: Be careful. Don’t assume that genes play any role whatsoever in the situation that concerns you. Maybe the factors that interest you were acquired, not from nature, but through nurture.

For ages, that sort of advice always infuriated me. It was unthinkable that environmental causes might have made me interested in science, then computers, then France, etc. To put it bluntly, nobody in my surroundings could have possibly persuaded me to get interested in out-of-the-way passions such as science, computers, France, etc. The only plausible explanation was that one of my ancestors must have supplied me with the necessary “good genes”.

Well, that last statement is utter nonsense. The only causes that make somebody smart come from the people who talk to him, the books he reads, the stuff he learns, etc. There are no magic genes in our bodies that turn on brightness as if we were an electric lamp.

It has taken me a long time to reach this simple conclusion.

Not as bright as I thought I was

I’ve always considered myself as relatively intelligent. That’s what people told me when I was a kid at school. Later, I thought I was bright when I became a computer programmer with IBM Australia. I simply failed to understand that I was merely the proverbial right man in the right place at the right time. Then I thought I was bright when I moved to France, married, raised a small family, and finally became a French citizen. Once again, as in Sydney, I was simply the right Australian in France at the right time. More recently, I started to think of myself as bright when I used my Macintosh computer at Gamone to publish a couple of family-history books. The truth of the matter is that I would have been silly to not take advantage of that excellent environment to produce those books. In any case, their existence doesn’t suggest for an instant that the author/publisher might have been in any way bright, merely fortunate.

A few days ago, for the first time in my life, at the august age of 76, the truth hit me with a bang. I’m not particularly intelligent. Purely lucky. The good old game consists of being in a convenient situation at exactly the right moment. Right place and right time. There’s a tiny bundle of convenient talents in my brain, but nothing whatsoever of an extraordinary nature.

It's high time that I made this clear! To myself, above all.

Still learning to master my dog

Some people ramble on for years about the novel they intend to publish, as soon as they find a publisher. I behave in the same way as far as mastering my dog is concerned. I talk about it constantly, and believe that my leap into mastery is just around the corner. But a bright observer (such as my son François) surely realizes that I’m unlikely to ever gain my diploma in dog mastery. It’s simply not in my genes.

For the last week or so, I had finally decided that the cold season is fast approaching us, and that it was time for me to accept the presence of Fitzroy inside the house. There’s no intrinsic dog-mastery problem in such a down-to-earth decision. All I have to do is to tie up Fitzroy outside, during the day, for at least an hour or so, to give him an opportunity of doing his business and having a pee. I repeat: no problem. If the worst came to the worst, and my dog decided to pee somewhere inside the house, in the middle of the night, it still wouldn’t be catastrophic. Besides, that situation would only arise if I went out of my way to give Fitzroy, late in the evening, a big bowl of milk… which would be a silly act for me.

Yesterday evening, Fitzroy was edging around the kitchen door as if he wanted to move out into the balmy night air. I must be careful about opening the door at such times, because my Gamone property is still a victim of disgusting Pyrale moths which dart towards any light that appears in the darkness. Be that as it may, last night, in the darkness, I did in fact make a single foolish mistake. I failed to attach my dog to a lead before letting him race out into the night air. Consequently, in the darkness, I failed to see where he had disappeared… but I soon learned (after a bit of silly shouting) that the Master’s animal was seated snugly in his kennel. (In daring to use the term “Master”, I was trying to crack a joke.) So, I dashed towards him and attached his collar to the chain alongside the kennel. Then I went back quickly inside the house, hoping that I wasn’t being pursued by too many moths. Once inside the lonely house, I watched some fine television, while listening periodically to check that my dog wasn’t barking.

This morning, at 8 o’clock, I was awoken by my clockwork brain. I saw from a window that Fitzroy, during the early hours of the morning, had performed an impressive wood-moving operation, over a distance of some ten metres. I grabbed my Nikon and took this photo of the result:

I have decided for the Nth time that, this evening, I will surely become, at last, an experienced dog-master. We'll see...

Peace at last for a man of peace

Shimon Peres [1923-2016]