I'm moving on. Call this read. Maybe nobody will notice that it isn't.

But it has made me discuss humour with people and I've been given some great ideas along the way. And I would like to preserve bits and pieces here.

My mother said that when we were little we were really funny but that other kids aren't. My first thought was that's what all mothers think. But actually, we were raised to think that laughing at life and ourselves is so important.

My family was experimental and this somewhat bothered friends of my parents who thought we were being brainwashed. Once when my brother was seven one of these friends asked him if he was allowed to think for himself. Quick as a flash in his best robot voice Chris said 'I am not programmed to answer that question'.

I can't imagine a more brilliant put down and from a little boy. I think we'd been allowed to watch an episode of Dr Who and it had greatly influenced us. I was a year older. So, when I say robot, I mean Dalek, of course.

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Pardon my putting down some things as we go along.

(1) ‘both mathematics and humor are economical and explicit'. Well, that simply isn't true even as a generalisation for humour. Any particular piece of humour may or may not rely on economy and explicitness.

(2) I have been asking this today: why is it that jokes from the past - let's say the 1930s - aren't funny for us. I want to know this partly because it is an aspect of how impossible it is to generalise about humour. It could be all sorts of things: social, political, cultural changes that prevent one being able to associate with a joke. It may be in the writing - perhaps if it was rewritten in a modern idiom it would be funnier.

But I do very much like this idea: that it is related to the Flynn effect. Ie, as our capacity for abstract thought increases maybe our humour becomes more abstract and we might define this as more sophisticated.

(3) This happened tonight. I was playing bridge and was introduced to my opponent as being 'the writer'. So slightly smug wanker says he is a writer too...he's written a book on squeezes and he didn't need to add that this makes him somewhat superior as it is technically advanced stuff. You know. Boy's stuff. AND he's played for England. Oh...so this was such a pleasure. I'm playing 3NT, his partner at some point shifts to a suit he has the ace of. He ducks the ace and then is subsequently squeezed out of it. Then he blamed his partner. Honestly. It was such fun.

I read this in the 1980s. It was a very useful book on the nature of humor, wit, etc. The first chapter's survey of theories of humor, alone, is worth the price of the book. The discussion of catastrophe theory is well done. This is one of those books that you will refer back to all your life. ( )