The significance of zero

I forget the name of the pub by the canal for reasons which will become clear, but I recall it was a gorgeous building with sweeping timber beams and barrels of local ale to quench the thirst, and real crisps - none of that Walkers rubbish, but proper thick crispy naturally-flavoured crisps.

Surely, though, the potato snacks weren't the best thing about this pub. There's very little, for me, that beats sitting in the sunshine in a pub garden with very comfortable company, good beer and great crisps to while away the time. M and I have that greatest of 'old friends' traits - the ability to carry an interesting and meaningful conversation, without any warmup, despite not really having been in contact for the past few years. This is one of the things I think defines true friendship.

It was during one of these amusing and meandering chats that one of our garden-fellows overheard M talking about some application development work he'd done for the National Curriculum. This chap called himself a 'shaman' and sincerely looked the part. His companion looked somewhat sparked-out over his pint of Kronie, but our attention was fixed on the shaman when he mentioned his ability to teach anyone about binary in one minute.

I won't pretend to understand the importance of what he showed us, even though I pretended to at the time. It hinged on The Significance of Zero - the capitalisation was apparent from his fanfare-like way of announcing it. It's safe to say that his method seemed much more enlightening than the way they taught binary at college. An observation is that his actual lesson took around five minutes due to his tangential manner of speaking, which was really quite captivating despite covering a multitude of tenuously-related topics in a short space of time.

The shaman and his buddy, who we'll call Sid, joined us at our picnic table. It seems our guests had been up partying for 36 hours previously and had come to their friends' boat to carry on their celebration of the end of the working week. The shaman was surprisingly coherent but Sid was, true to expectation, belligerent and unsteady.

The shaman rolled a medicinal cigarette and we continued discussing life, the universe and binary for some time over another pint and the occasional puff.

Half an hour later, a young couple were invited (read: probably dragged) to join us. They were hippie, sociable and sweet, and she was all of the pretty. They'd only known each other for three weeks and had come to Wiltshire for a (ahem) weekend away, so they were full of the joys of young, awkward sex. I have never seen a young couple beam so much in all my life.

Eventually, the dogs tired of sunbathing and philosophy and became restless, so we returned to the idea of wandering along the canal to a spot M had chosen where we could exercise the dogs, and enjoy the collected company with a Caffreys and our cheeky joint.