A Sports Massage business used this heading in an advertisement in our local paper. It’s run by someone I’ll call Andy.
To Andy, whose business is there to ensure
Its patients with problems will soon find a cure
For problems with muscles and pains in the joints,
I’d like to complain on a couple of points:
Aches and pains in the plural, though nasty, I’m sure,
Are nothing to those that your readers endure
When seeing your Sports Massage ad in the press
Whose errant apostrophes add to their stress.
In reply to your question that asks: “Ache’s and pain’s?”,
Have you spotted the errors that message contains?
The apostrophes in it are ghastly mistakes,
You really don’t need them in “pains” or in “aches”.
Apostrophe use is a tricky affair,
But plurals don’t have them – they shouldn’t be there!
Possessives they’re not, and there’s no missing letter,
Please, Andy, delete them, and make me feel better.
South East of England sea users have identified 31 areas that need protection against damage from human activity such as dredging for gravel. Of the 31 proposals they have put to the government, 17 were flagged as being at ‘higher risk’. But of these, the government is considering only 7 for designation as Marine Conservation Zones in 2013. This poem explains how the cuttlefish, one of the many creatures and organisms that live in the sea off the Sussex coast, is much more than a bony treat for caged birds.
A cuttlefish has got three hearts –
One more than Doctor Who!
But what they pump is not blood-red;
Instead, it’s greenish-blue.
Their cuttlebone gives buoyancy
(Without it, they’d be squid),
And they can camouflage their skin
To disguise where they are hid.
If predators appear, and think
They’re something nice to scoff,
Their ink sac squirts a jet-black cloud
Which rather puts them off.
They’re really quite remarkable,
With W-shaped eyes,
And tentacles to grab their prey
And spit to paralyse.
So let’s conserve their habitats
Off Sussex by the Sea,
And let’s not dredge their special spots –
Let cuttlefishes be!
The postman occasionally brings a letter with puzzling instructions printed on its envelope.
The envelope, dropped through the letterbox, said:
“Please do not bend” in a type bold and red.
Well, a message like that one you cannot ignore:
I obeyed it – and that’s why it’s still on the floor.
It’s not always quite as straightforward as adding an apostrophe–s, as I found when I consulted the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors and Hart’s Rules.
The possessive of words, I confess
Is often a cause of great stress.
The great and the wise
Forever advise,
“End the word with apostrophe–s”.
If a singular word ends in s,
It always applies – more or less1.
And if it’s a name
Then the rule’s much the same,
Even when there are two, as in “Jess”,
Unless it would sound a right mess –
Then you leave off the s, I would guess2.
And with plurals, it’s clear –
No extra s here.
(Well, that’s sorted out then. Success!)
[Image: thewriter.com]
1. But if the added s would be silent in speech, it’s generally omitted e.g. “for goodness’ sake”. 2. Like “Bridges” (not “Bridges’s”) – also with the possessive of ‘ancient’ names, like Xerxes, Jesus, Herodotus.
The front-page headlines of newspapers have for some years now been moving ever lower, displaced by a line of ‘Reader Offers’ and ‘Win a Meal’ boxes. In our local paper last week, it was over half-way down the page. I felt that a protest was called for, and wrote to the Editor at their offices in Market Square.
On behalf of the Society
For Saving Fallen Headlines,
I pen this hurried note to meet
Your newspaper’s tight deadlines.
Sir, here is why our members
All flew into a rage:
Your last-week’s front-page headline
Was half-way down the page!
That poor, defenceless line of text
Had no way to complain.
On her behalf, our members trust
It won’t occur again.
For if it does, Sir, be aware,
That we’ll turn up in force
To demonstrate in Market Square
(Quite peaceably, of course).
I hope it will not come to that;
I hope you’ll not frustrate us.
Please act before it is too late –
Give headlines back their status.
A correspondent working Abroad emailed to say that “A Government warning said everyone travelling in icy conditions should take a shovel, hat, blankets, a supply of food and drink, de-icer, rock salt, a torch and spare batteries, a petrol can, first-aid kit and jump leads”. He wondered why people on his tram were looking at him.
A Government warning was recently aired:
“In icy conditions, if travelling far,
Take jump leads, torch, blankets, rock salt – be prepared”.
But it wasn’t restricted to travelling by car . . .
So walkers, and folk on the tram and the train,
Are weighed down with baggage that’s really not needed.
Their terrible plight should help to explain
Why imprecise warnings are best left unheeded.
It’s January 2013, and a 130,000-tonne asteroid, known as 2012 DA14, is due to pass within 35,000 km of the Earth – that’s closer than one-tenth of the mean distance of the Moon – on 15 February. NASA’s Near Earth Object Program estimates the chance that it will not collide with the Earth as 1 in 556,000. I hope they’ve done their sums right . . .
A hundred-and-thirty thousand tonnes of Solar System scrap
Is heading fast in our direction. But don’t get in a flap:
Astronomers have done the sums and confidently say
It’ll come much closer than the Moon, but everything’s okay.
I hope their observations have been made with high precision,
I hope their theory’s good enough to back up their decision,
I hope they got completely right the flight the asteroid’s taken,
Or else we might not be around to say “You were mistaken”!
[Later note: Phew – they did get it right! But they hadn’t spotted another asteroid, a third of the size of 2012 DA14, that did enter Earth’s atmosphere that very day. It disintegrated over Chelyabinsk, some 1500 km east of Moscow, the shock wave shattering windows and causing many injuries but no deaths.]
We found a pair of mittens belonging to a granddaughter on the floor of our car, just after her parents had whisked her up to Fort William for Hogmanay. But they are resourceful folk – here’s one solution they might have considered:
When travelling with one-year-old tots
To the wintry land of the Scots,
It’s a wise Mum who kits
Out her offspring with mitts
’Gainst the cold in this chilliest of spots.
But oh dear, if those mittens are lost,
Will small fingers succumb to Jack Frost?
No! Be unorthodox –
A spare pair of socks
Will keep her hands warm (fingers crossed).
“Please keep this gate,” said the sign,
“Shut at all times of the day.”
All very well, but
A gate that stays shut
Is a fence with pretensions, I’d say.
In previous years, these pot plants with their colourful bracts have been big sellers in the weeks before Christmas. But this year, with only a few days to go, the shops and garden centres seemed to have huge numbers left unsold. Perhaps there were other attractions.
We’re Christmas Poinsettias, stacked up on the shelves
Next to old Santa, his grotto and elves.
We’re very attractive (well, we think we are)
The loveliest present for Christmas, by far.
Long hours in darkness we willingly spent
To colour our bracts up in time for Advent.
The shop’s very busy, and people are eyeing us . . .
But they’re walking straight past us – why’s nobody buying us?
It seems we must face it: the fact is, this Yule,
The followers of fashion all think we’re uncool.
Our chances of being in every home dwindle
As customers fight to snap up the last Kindle.
But nil desperandum: there’s just one last chance –
Will Boxing Day discounting give us a chance?
We’re not very hopeful, though; everyone reckons
We’ve had it, we’re doomed. The compost heap beckons . . .
During an expedition in April 2010 aboard the Royal Research Ship James Cook, scientists from Southampton University and its National Oceanography Centre used a robot submarine and HyBIS, a deep-diving vehicle, to locate and study volcanic vents at a depth of five kilometres in the Cayman Trough, an undersea trench south of the Cayman Islands. The vents shoot jets of copper-rich water at temperatures hotter than 450 ºC high into the ocean’s lower layers. Around the vents, the team discovered a new species of pale shrimp congregating in hordes around the six-metre tall mineral spires of the vents. They named it Rimicaris hybisae, after the deep-sea vehicle that they used to collect them. Instead of conventional eyes, the shrimp has a ‘light-sensing organ’ on its back, which may help it to navigate in the faint glow of deep-sea vents. Here, one of them describes its novel lifestyle:
Here in the Caribbean, at the bottom of the sea,
Your colour-sensing frontal eyes would be no use to me.
I’m Rimicaris hybisae, a shrimp who likes it hot;
I’ve got some useful optic gear, but ‘normal’ it is not!
My sunless evolution had to take a different tack:
To navigate my world I have an organ on my back
Which ‘sees’ black-body radiance around a deep-sea vent.
My life might not be bright like yours, but I am quite content.
I feed my tame bacteria just underneath my shell
With sulphuretted hydrogen (the stuff with bad-eggs smell)
That gushes from these vents all day. It’s symbiosis, see?
The H2S keeps them alive, and they give life to me.
A group of assorted British scientists on the RRS James Cook used a remotely operated vehicle to explore parts of the East Scotia Ridge in the Southern Ocean between Antarctica and South America. In January 2010, they discovered a number of new species living around its deep-sea hydrothermal vents. One of these was a new species of ’yeti’ crab, characterised by a dense ventral coating of long setae (hairs or bristles) covered in filamentous bacteria. These crabs were crowded together – up to 600 per square metre – around vent chimneys. One of them explains:
On the East Scotia Ridge, where new sea-floor is born,
There are mineral towers of chimney-like form
Whose cosy environment shelter affords,
And that’s where my mates and I gather in hordes.
Now here is a fact that you’d never have guessed:
Volcanic vents can put hairs on your chest –
The hairs trap bacteria which I like to eat:
I scrape ’em all off and they go down a treat!
I’m a yeti crab really, but lacking a name,
Which the crew of the James Cook ship felt was a shame.
Can you guess what they called me? Go on, have a stab!
That’s right, I’m the hairy-chested Hasselhoff crab!
[Images: Daily Mail (map); BBC (crabs on vent chimney)]
A knife-throwing artist, called Jack,
Could never quite master the knack.
His throws from a distance
Perforated assistants –
Which must be why Jack got the sack.
There’s a message (not the one in the picture!) on an old piece of board that’s been leaning against the back wall of a commercial building as long as I can remember.
That sign had been there for ever.
I think it was trying to prove
That people will do what signs tell them.
(What the sign said was: “DO NOT REMOVE”.)
Some astronomically catastrophic events are predicted by astrophysicists, but they do serve to highlight how lucky we are to be alive.
In one billion years from today, With a 10% brighter Sun shining, All our vaporous water will have gone; So for life1, there’ll be no silver lining.
Don’t worry, don’t fret, don’t panic! Keep calm and just carry on. The present is yours to experience – Enjoy it before it is gone.
A runaway greenhouse effect Will inevitably come into play As the Sun fattens up and gets brighter And boils all Earth’s water away2.
Don’t worry, don’t fret, don’t panic! Keep calm and just carry on. The present is yours to experience – Enjoy it before it is gone.
Andromeda (M31), Which is now just a faint, fuzzy blur, Is due for a Milky Way crash3, And that’ll create quite a stir.
Don’t worry, don’t fret, don’t panic! Keep calm and just carry on. The present is yours to experience – Enjoy it before it is gone.
The time will arrive, one fine day4,
When the Sun will swallow the Earth
As it swells to become a red giant
And shine out for all it’s worth.
Don’t worry, don’t fret, don’t panic! Keep calm and just carry on. The present is yours to experience – Enjoy it before it is gone.
Footnotes:
1. Most current forms of life, anyway
2. In about 3 billion years from now
3. Over the period between 4 and 7 billion years from now
4. Over the period between 5 and 7.5 billion years from now
The song, “Daisy Bell”, composed by Englishman Harry Dacre in 1892, doesn’t actually record Daisy’s response to her suitor’s proposal that she join him on a tandem. He has now, somewhat posthumously, agreed to reveal what it was:
Here’s the truth about cycling Daisy,
Who I’d wooed for many long days. She
Replied, when I asked her,
“T’would be a disaster!
Ride a tandem – with you? Are you crazy?”
I hadn’t done anything major to my garden for quite a while, but now I could see that the lumpy, weedy thing I jokingly called a back lawn really needed some serious restoration work. It seemed to take my garden by surprise.
Hi! I am Gordon’s Garden.
So far, this year’s been good.
I know in past years, I’ve complained*,
But I hope you understood.
It’s a give-and-take relationship:
I give, he takes away
The lovely food I grow him
And moans about my clay.
But this year has been different
Up to now. He’s shown goodwill
And not gone on at me at all.
I wonder if he’s ill? Oh no, he’s not! Look, here he comes
To renovate my lawn . . .
He’s strimming off my lovely grass . . .
And now my lawn is gawn.
To injury, add insult.
Seems I’m not good enough:
He’s covered me with sandy loam
And fertiliser stuff.
He’s raking it and levelling it,
And now he’s scattered seeds:
‘Hard-Wearing Lawn’, the box declares –
He can’t have liked my weeds . . .
I’ll soon be Gordon’s Garden
With a head of bright green hair.
I feel that I’ve been slighted.
I’m hurt, but I don’t care.
At least his mind’s diverted
From going on at me;
I bet it doesn’t last, though –
It never does, you see.
Selling fossils to visitors barely kept the wolf from the door of Mary Anning’s family in their storm-lashed sea-front house in Lyme Regis. Following the example of her cabinet-maker father Richard and older brother Joseph, she became adept, not just at finding them in the Lower Liassic rocks of nearby Black Ven, but also in preparing them as fine specimens. Local gentry helped publicise and sell the complete ‘crocodile’ (later to be named Ichthyosaurus) which she and Joseph found and extracted in 1811/1812. Scholars soon beat a path to her door to take advantage of her local knowledge and expertise; but Mary was of the wrong sex, class and religious persuasion to be acknowledged in academia. Recognition of her contribution to palaeontology was slow in coming, but in 1838, nine years before her death, aged just 47, the British Association raised an annuity to support her. And in 2010, the Royal Society included her in a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science.
She who once sold sea-shells on that tongue-twisting sea-shore Wasn’t just a “fossilist”. Miss Anning was much more: Survivor of a lightning strike, selling fossils from her door, She grew to be an expert and a fine preparator.
Her Dad it was who showed her how her finds could extract cash From seasiders from Town, down for a gentle Georgian splash. Then brother Joseph found a skull. She realised in a flash There might skeletal remains to find; at once they made a dash To Black Vens’s treacherous shaley slumps; but it would have to wait Until the mudslides had dispersed – the weather would dictate. At last she dug into the shore (or so the tales relate) And found the bones of Ichthyosaur for her to excavate.
More ichthyosaurs, and plesiosaurs, pterodactyls and the rest Brought Mary to the attention of the brightest and the best. But Mary was a woman, poor, self-taught, and not well-dressed – She wasn’t even Anglican! So, as you might have guessed, Her expertise was used, but barely recognised in print; Her fossil finds brought income of a sort, and just a hint Of fame, but not of fortune. She would never make a mint, But the BA raised a pension so that she would not die skint.
But die she did, mid-forties, of a cancer of the breast. A dogged palaeontologist, of a character possessed Which drove her ever onwards on her dinosaurial quest – This Jurassic Coastal Lady, from Lyme Regis in the west.
You can’t just dive in with a digger and a truck to move a rubbish tip, not when it’s designated Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) anyway, as the Bluebell Railway in Sussex found to its cost (around £3.5 million).
Municipal Waste, when it is Solid,
Is “MSW”, and it is horrid.
And if you want to have it moved,
Its risk potential must be proved.
A case in point is worth a mention:
The Bluebell Railway’s planned extension.
When Doctor Beeching’s axe came down
On Sheffield Park to Grinstead town,
The cutting north of Kingscote station
Looked like an open invitation.
It soon became the ideal place
For councils needing dumping space.
Filled to the top with this and that,
Plastic bags, old tyres and tat –
A hundred thousand cubic metre
Clay-topped pile (to make it neater).
But Bluebell’s doughty volunteers
Said, “We will shift it in ten years”.
Environmental Planning rules,
Complex risk assessment tools,
Weighing up the key statistics,
Working out the job’s logistics –
All this and more had to be done
Before the clearance was begun
Then ninety thousand tonnes of stuff
Was taken out. It left enough
To modify the track profiles
Along the Bluebell’s last two miles.
And it will open, so they say,
In March next year*. Hip, hip, hooray!
A few days in the company of granddaughter Jessica revealed some developing abilities not routinely found in an eighteen-month-old child.
How marvellous it is to view
How children grow from one to two.
Grannies and Granddads are allowed
To feel a little smug and proud.
But we can’t help a slight suspicion
That Jess has had advanced tuition:
Behind the many skills she’s gaining
Must be some intensive training . . .
How else could little Jessica be
So handy with an Allen key
And know the proper way to clamber
Up the flinty walls at Bramber*?
Her Mum and Dad, of course, say “No,
We simply let her have a go.
She watches everything we do,
Determined she will do it too.
“We climb, and we use Allen keys
With Jess around; so that’s why she’s
Picked up these skills herself, we guess.
We know she’s special – that’s our Jess!”
* A ruined Norman castle in Sussex.
[Image of a sculpture on a building in Lisbon: lisbon.for91days.com]
In the English Civil Wars (in which the Scots and Irish also became embroiled), the two key figures each felt a divine imperative.
1629–1640: Charles I governs without Parliament
“God wants me to rule,” said Charles Stuart,
“It’s called the Divine Right of Kings.”
“God wants me to fight you,” thought Cromwell.
“You’ll see what such arrogance brings.”
1634: Ship money
“You’re here to raise taxes, not govern,”
Said Charles to MPs. “I decree
That all towns shall pay me ‘ship money’,
Even those that are far from the sea.”
1637: Revised Book of Common Prayer imposed in Scotland
“God wants me to alter the Prayer Book,”
Said Charles. “You have to accept its new style.”
“No we don’t,” said the Scots Presbyterians,
“It’s Catholic, it’s evil, it’s vile!”
1642: Charles fails to arrest 5 MPs in the House of Commons
Charles Stuart demanded of Parliament
“Are five guilty of treason here now?”
“I’m the servant of Parliament,” said the Speaker,
“And speak only as this House may allow.”
1642–1646: The First English Civil War
The Parliament signed up an army,
And so did King Charles: it was war.
But the King couldn’t get into London,
And totally lost Marston Moor.
The New Model Army won battles:
After Langport and Naseby both fell,
Charles hoped to find refuge in Newark,
But the Scots turned against him as well.
They handed him over to Parliament
Who locked up the King out of sight.
When the Army removed him to London
He escaped to unwelcoming Wight.
1648: The Second English Civil War – Charles executed in 1649
Imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle,
The King sought a deal with the Scots;
But Lambert and Cromwell between them
Tied the Royalist forces in knots:
They fought battles widespread and bloody
As the country folk looked on with dread.
But Cromwell put down the uprisings –
And in Whitehall, King Charles lost his head.
1649–1651: Ireland and Scotland
Uprisings in Ireland, then Scotland
(Which had hailed Charles’s son ‘Charles the Second’),
Were savagely dealt with by Cromwell
And the Second Charles fled, for France beckoned.
1653–1658: The Protectorate
“You are no parliament”, said Cromwell
In the Commons, removing the Mace.
Thus Cromwell became ‘Lord Protector’:
“Your Highness,” folk said to his face.
1658: Cromwell died
When his urinary tract got infected,
He died and, some say, was interred
In a corner of Westminster Abbey,
Though the facts of the matter are blurred . . .
1660: Charles II proclaimed King in London
A Parliament, freshly elected,
Decided to offer the crown
To the Second Charles over the Channel,
So he came back to Old London Town.
1661: The Restoration of the monarchy
He was crowned in Westminster Abbey –
But not before Cromwell’s remains
Had been exhumed and hung up at Tyburn,
Shrouded, and weighed down with chains.
Charles I and Oliver Cromwell: a history lesson
“A King by Divine Right,” claimed Charles,
“Had to do what God told him he ought.”
“But He told me to fight you!” said Cromwell.
Now we see what such arrogance wrought . . .
It’s about 10 km above us, and has appeared in our weather forecasts in the last few years as a contributing factor to unusual weather.
If the weather in summer has a cold, windy, wet theme,
You can bet it’s because of this new-fangled ‘Jet Stream’.
It’s a fast-moving air mass, high up in the skies,
That blows from the west, unseen by our eyes.
Met Office folk use their special black arts
To plot anticyclones and winds on their charts:
They reckon that knowing the Jet Stream’s location
Helps forecast the weather in store for the nation.
To pilots, it can be a blessing or curse:
The turbulence round it is bumpy, or worse.
But to fly in it westwards is fast and saves fuel –
Avoid it on eastbound flights, though, as a rule.
The Jet Stream’s been useful to help us explain
Why the weather this year has been such a pain:
We can blame it for all of our weather below –
How we’ve managed without it before, I don’t know.
Sydney Savory Buckman (1860–1929) was the son of James Buckman, who developed the single-rooted parsnip and was somewhat obsessed with ammonites. Sydney is reported to have explained discontinuities in the rock sequence using these interesting analogies.
If you find discontinuities a difficult idea,
Syd Savory, Jim Buckman’s son, can help to make it clear:
“A fishing net has strings across – like strata; then again,
Its holes are like the time-gaps in the stratigraphic chain.”
But why aren’t sediments laid down without such awkward pauses?
Why do we find these sequence gaps, and what could be their causes?
These questions Buckman pondered long, and then he had a thought:
“Just think about a pasty, of the proper Cornish sort.
“In the morning, it exists: you can see it; it is real.
You put it on the table, it will be your lunchtime meal.
At one o’clock, you eat it up, enjoying every bite.
And thus it disappears from view – ‘eroded’ from your sight!
“If on the table now you place a slice of bread for tea,
Between the two you’ll see you’ve got discontinuity!
The pasty ‘stratum’ did exist, but now it is no more –
That slice of bread now lies where Cornish pasty laid before.”
Next time I’m on a field trip, I will think of S.S.B.
His wacky explanation is a good one, you’ll agree.
But just in case it slips my mind, I’ll take an aide-memoire:
A pasty and a fishing net, on the back seat of my car.
“Keep taking the tablets, this one’s for your heart –
Keeps the blood pressure down; one a day for a start.
And this one should lower your cholesterol count –
We’ll see how you fare with the smallest amount.
Your acidic reflux, with which you’ve been troubled
Should respond to this third one, or the dose will be doubled.
And lastly, this one, for the gentleman’s curse;
It isn’t a cure, but things shouldn’t get worse.”
I listened intently to every word
That the good doctor uttered, in case I mis-heard.
But my brain became tired, as he droned on and on,
And my eyes started drooping – concentration had gone.
I think I dozed off for a second or three,
And I missed the last word of his message to me:
“Keep taking the tablets, old fellow,” he said,
“Keep taking the tablets, or else you’ll be . . .”
What should have been a simple purchase, needing a simple receipt, took 640 mm of till-roll paper to complete. I felt moved to write to the offending shop.
I went into your shop in town
To buy a single item –
You’d think the details wouldn’t take
A foot-long slip to write ’em.
It itemised the VAT amounts
At rates from nought to twenty
(Three of which were zero, so
Just one would have been plenty).
Three times it showed the company’s name,
Its numerical ID,
Sales and Tax Invoice Numbers,
With lots of space left free.
And after that, the till spewed out
Another foot of text
With offers that I didn’t want.
It left me mighty vexed.
All I really needed was
A record, short and sweet,
Just saying what I’d bought, and when –
A simple till receipt.
What a mindless waste of paper,
Unnecessary bumf!
We customers don’t need it.
It makes us angry. Hrrumph!
The geologist, mineralogist, and determinedly eccentric Reverend Willam Buckland (1784–1856) was the first to give a name to a type of fossil about which his colleague, Dr. William Wollaston, believed Georgian England would probably have preferred not to talk.
You’ll know them when you see them, for they look like what they are.
Of various shapes and sizes, but the fanciest by far
Are the curious stony spirals, which young Mary Anning’s eyes
Picked out among the ichthyosaurs whose bones lay in the Lias.
“Well, what d’you make of these,” she asked a visitor to Lyme –
Bill Buckland, who would help her out whenever he had time.
Now Mary was a curious girl: she’d found inside these stones
The fossilised remains of ancient fishes’ scales and bones.
Bill wasn’t one to tiptoe round indelicate ideas.
When Mary handed him her finds, he said, “Well it appears
They’re stony . . . and what’s more, I think they quite resemble dung!”
And into his collecting bag these curious things he slung.
He sent some off to Wollaston, to get them analysed.
“They’re rich in phosphate,” said the Doc, “But you’d be well advised
To watch your reputation, lest it crumble into pieces
By getting close and personal with animals’ old faeces.”
But Buckland didn’t care: he was eccentric, and he knew it!
If something scientific needed doing, he would do it!
“These things are useful,” Buckland thought. “They show what sort of food
Their owners once had preyed on, caught, and gobbled up and chewed.”
“They need a name, though,” William thought, “and it should be in Greek –
My dictionary should have in it the very terms I seek.
First ‘stony’ – ah, that’s lithos. And now ‘dung’? Well, let me see . . .”
He turned the pages . . . “Kopros! There! So ‘coprolite’ t’will be.”
After what seems like weeks of gloomy, wet weather, the Sun has made a welcome return. Not for long, though, if the forecasters are right.
There’s a bright, shiny Sun where the rain clouds used to be,
And it’s beaming down on you, and it’s beaming down on me.
Quick, slap on cream to block it out – especially UVB!
How long will it stay there? Well, we’ll have to wait and see . . .
It’s not just the farmer with his gun, gun, gun that today’s rabbits have to cope with.
Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run!
Here comes a car, doing a ton, ton, ton.
If you’re not fast,
This breath may be your last,
So run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run!
Next door they are cannibalistic. I suspected there might be foul play When I overheard one of them saying, “We’re eating Al Fresco today”.
Now I know Mr Fresco’s not perfect.
He’s not the most honest of folk;
But to cook the poor fellow and eat him?
Well, that’s getting beyond a bad joke.
Al Fresco has never done anything
Deserving a sentence of death,
And I’ll make sure this dreadful miscarriage
Is righted, until my last breath.
A reprieve should be given immediately –
The judgement was much, much too hard on him.
I decided to write to Her Majesty,
Requesting she posthumously pardon him.
But first, I went round to the neighbours:
“Al Fresco is innocent!” I cried.
“Yes, of course, mate,” they said, “Come and join us,
The burgers are just being fried . . .”
Young Willie the worm
Liked to wriggle and squirm
As he burrowed his way through the dirt.
But he wondered one day,
In a worm sort of way,
What life would be like in a shirt.
“A shirt would look fine
In a wormy design
Without any collar or arms.
I’d wear it to show
All the girl worms I know,
Who would straightaway fall for my charms!”
He soon got to know
A worm who could sew,
And she made up a shirt for young Willie.
Though he thought he looked cool,
All the girls cried, “You fool,
“That shirt makes you look really silly!”
Young Willie worm found
That his life underground
Had been better not wearing a shirt,
So he threw it away.
You can find him today,
Still burrowing his way through the dirt.
A young snail called Joe
Was so terribly slow;
He wished he could slither much faster.
Though he tried some improvements
To speed up his movements,
It was something poor Joe couldn’t master.
He thought, “If a bird,
Like a thrush, ever heard
How terribly slowly I slide,
He would peck me; and then
He would peck me again,
And I’d end up inside his inside.”
But then, in a dream,
Joe thought up a scheme
Which he couldn’t get out of his mind:
“If I had two feet,
I could whiz down the street
And leave all my snail friends behind!”
And, what do you know –
He started to grow
One more slimy foot! “That makes two!,”
Said Joe. “Well I never,
That’s ever so clever,
I wonder what else I can do.”
In his dream, he thought, “Why
Cannot snails like me fly?”
And the moment he thought it, he found
He’d sprouted some things
That looked just like wings,
So he flapped them and flew all around!
“Whoopee,” shouted Joe
As he zoomed past a crow.
“I wish I could fly to the stars!”
At once, from his shell
Grew a rocket. “Farewell,”
Shouted Joe, as he shot off to Mars.
When he landed, he found
That the red Martian ground
Wasn’t what he had thought it would be:
There was nothing alive.
“I shall never survive!”
Cried poor Joe. “What is happening to me?”
Just then Joe awoke,
And his Mummy snail spoke:
“Why, Joe, you’ve been dreaming, you know!”
Said Joe, “I’ve been flying!
But there’s no denying
I think I would rather be slow!”
Geologists, like astronomers, wring grand deductions out of the very limited types of evidence available to them here on the surface of the Earth: their deepest borehole has penetrated less than 8 miles into the crust. They have nevertheless made great strides. But the Earth itself is not impressed.
Oh, you think you’re very clever
With your surveys and your mapping,
Your stratigraphic columns
And your geo-seismic zapping.
You can work out strike directions
And calculate the dip,
But you can’t predict eruptions
Or when my plates will slip.
Your boreholes barely touch me,
Even though my crust is thin.
You’re just an irritation
That’s tickling my skin.
Your tiny toy submersibles
Just potter round my oceans,
And you’ve only just discovered
My plate-tectonic motions!
At least you know my age now,
And how I came to be;
But I doubt you’ll ever get to grips
With the very core of me –
My life is still in turmoil,
I feel my insides churning.
Just bear in mind how little
And how shallow is your learning . . .
For a tunneller, certain Chalk strata have undesirable characteristics, such as the presence of hard flints or sand-like phosphatic chalk. Tunnelling is expensive, but so are delays and damage to tunnel boring machines which hit unexpected geology. So engineers planning to tunnel through the Chalk have two conflicting objectives: minimum cost and maximal information. Professor Rory Mortimore told a recent meeting how he uses selective borehole drilling to achieve a balance between them, and offered some sage advice.
As I might have said before, Professor Rory Mortimore
Is just the guy you need to give a talk
On the varied lithographics and the complex statigraphics
Of that soft, white, porous limestone we call Chalk.
Inspired, perhaps, by moles, he is happy boring holes
But examines every core for tell-tale signs:
In cold and draughty shacks, he looks for fossils, flints and cracks
To check it stratigraphically aligns
With exposures, known to most, on our sunny Sussex coast,
Where the flint and marl bands show in all their glory.
That way he gets a clue about what tunnellers must do.
But visual correlation’s half the story.
Borehole geophys is the latest thing there is –
It can spot phosphatic chalk. And, what is more,
Cameras can record all the layers freshly bored,
As back-up to each frail, extracted core.
Initially, he’ll drill his boreholes far apart, until
A sequence goes against his expectation.
Then, because it’s made him warier, he drills out more cores in that area,
So tunnellers have better information.
“Expect the unexpected; be excited, not dejected
If things don’t always turn out as they should;
For knowledge must advance by serendipity and chance,
It’s much less fun if everything ’s understood!”
Singing the praises of an ancient Sussex market town.
Come and shop until you drop,
Come and eat until you pop!
You’ll be welcome when you stop
Here in Horsham!
We’ve a Carfax, not a Square,
We’ve a Causeway; but beware –
There’s a dragon in its lair,
Here in Horsham!
We do music, arts and dramas,
We’ve got markets for our farmers,
Check our Wealden panoramas
Here in Horsham!
Sip your coffee, beer or tea
In a town with history,
And relax, unwind, feel free,
Here in Horsham!
[Images: horshamconservatives.com, Wikipedia Commons, roadsofstone.files.wordpress.com, foodrockssouth.co.uk, s0.geograph.org.uk, Wikimedia Commons]
I spotted a packet of these and wondered how they had been produced. A subliminal voice explained.
Our free-range chipolatas all enjoy a happy life,
So your conscience can be blameless as you slice them with your knife.
They get fresh air and exercise, with access to fresh grazing
In meadows whose diversity is something quite amazing.
We give them the conditions that allow them to have fun:
They run and jump and frolic as they soak up all the sun.
At night-time, they can snuggle into beds of pristine straw
In conditions of such luxury you’ve never seen before.
Come and view our free-range lovelies on their eco-farm in Devon;
See how blissful their existence is in chipolata heaven –
It’s why their skins turn golden brown, and why they taste so yummy.
But please don’t ever tell them they’ll end up inside your tummy . . .
I have just directed an innocent visitor who sought the location of Horsham’s Register Office to where it used to be until three years ago. Oh well, if she ever manages to find where it moved to, she will at least have learned more about the geography of the town.
If ever you are lost, and are driven to accost
A local for directions, I’m the chap
Who with confidence will say, “Oh, it’s easy – that’s the way…”.
(You’ll wish you’d come prepared and brought a map.)
I’ll dish out clear directions so chock-full of imperfections,
They’re guaranteed to drive you round the bend –
So many bends in fact that, though I might have lacked
Precision, you will get there – in the end . . .
And your knowledge of the place will have grown at such a pace
That, if people ask you which way they should go,
You can confidently say, “Oh, it’s easy – that’s the way…”,
And it’s me you’ll have to thank for all you know.
Like other punctuation marks, the apostrophe’s job is to clarify meaning. But, as Lynne Truss in her popular book Eats, Shoots & Leaves (Profile Books, 2003) notes, it needs our help. The website of the Apostrophe Protection Society (yes, there really is one), under its Chairman, John Richards, gives examples of apostrophic wrongdoing and offers guidance. I thought I ought to do my bit too.
The wrongly-used apostrophe
Is like a weed. It is, you see,
Good punctuation, in this case
Appearing where it has no place.
You mustn’t think of them as cure-alls.
They can’t turn singulars to plurals:
As every well-read over-eight knows*
There should not be one in “potato’s”**.
You should develop this obsession:
An apostrophe denotes possession;
And also, you will find it fits
Where something’s missing, as in “it’s”.
(But rules like that can cast some doubt,
For “its” – possessive – goes without!)
Don’t let the weeds grow. Make a fuss
And, if in doubt, consult Lynne Truss . . .
* I wonder if this is true, these days?
** Unless it’s possessive, of course . . .
An email from the chairman of the local Lifesavers Club wanted me to donate my Waitrose tokens to his cause. (You’re given a token as you leave the store, to put in one of three boxes near the exit; at the end of the month, Waitrose divides £1000 among the charities according to the depth of tokens in each box.)
Shopping’s not simple in Waitrose.
Hard enough to decide between brands;
But then, when you’ve filled up your trolley,
You’ve another tough choice on your hands.
Three charity boxes accost you,
In which you can see little mounds
Of green plastic tokens from shoppers
Which Waitrose will turn into pounds.
How do you decide which to favour
With the token the checkout girl gave you?
Well, help is at hand in an email
From swimmers who’re training to save you:
“Hoard all your discs until April,
Then into the box with the label
‘Horsham Lifesavers’ appended
Please post every one, if you’re able.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever been lobbied
To influence how I should vote.
But I’ll donate my little green tokens
In the hope that they’ll keep me afloat.
A Wiltshire company called Stonegate markets its free-range eggs in girly-pink boxes, labelled ‘Ella Valentine Baking Eggs’. I worried that people (like me) might not buy them in case they weren’t suitable for dunking soldiers in at breakfast. They replied to my anxious email, saying they just wanted to get more people baking.
These eggs aren’t just for bakin’,
There’s more that they can do:
And one of these days these eggs are gonna
Give you breakfast too.
You can fry ’em, poach them, boil ’em
Use ’em in your shampoo;
But one of these days these eggs are gonna
Get you bakin’ too.
That’s why these eggs from Stonegate
Were ‘born to be baked’ – it’s true,
Cos that’s what Ella Valentine
Wants y’all to do.
Are you ready, eggs? Start bakin’!
[Image: popsops.com. Apologies to lyricist Lee Hazlewood, and singer Nancy Sinatra, whose 1966 boots were made for walkin’.]
My trust in modern technolgy, based largely on ignorance of its inner workings, nearly led to rejection of a potentially useful bit of kit.
My sat-nav is very demanding.
She insists that I do as I’m told
In a tone that is firm and commanding,
Persistent, unfriendly, ice-cold.
I felt differently when I first saw her:
“That’s the sat-nav for me, I declare –
She’s so slim, so petite, I adore her!”
And that’s how began our affair.
I was sure I could soon get to know her,
But what ought to have roused my suspicions
Was the USB socket below her,
And her long list of Terms and Conditions.
“Such details,” I thought, “are distractions.
As we travel through life’s hidden byways
I’ll discover her subtle attractions.”
But I soon found that her ways weren’t my ways.
We started off well, as we travelled
On routes that I knew pretty well;
But my trust in her guidance unravelled
When she sought out the back roads to Hell.
“Turn left at the junction,” she insisted,
When I knew turning right was the norm.
Down lanes that were narrow and twisted
We sped, as I strove to conform.
I knew I would get no apology:
She would claim her technology forced her
(Like hormones in human biology).
I felt it was time I divorced her.
I grabbed at her 12-volt supply,
“This’ll teach you,” I growled at her screen.
Just in time, though, I realised why
She had taken us where we been . . .
. . . And I let go the threatened supply lead.
In her wonderful, caring, devoted way,
She had faithfully satisfied my need
And avoided a jam on the motorway!
So we’ve patched up our quarrel, made amends again.
The past is forgotten – it’s history.
We now have become best of friends again.
But the mind of a sat-nav’s a mystery!
A persistent urban myth says that scientists have shown that bumblebees can’t fly. While it’s true that basic fixed-wing aerodynamics would arrive at that conclusion, the bumblebee has developed a wing action that is anything but fixed!
I am a big, fat bumblebee.
I cannot fly, theoretically –
And yet I do! You see, the fact is,
It just takes lots and lots of practice . . .
Micropalaeontologists deal with the miniscule hard parts of long-dead organisms. One type of such fragments is called an otolith, or ‘earstone’, a tiny concretion which once acted as a gravity sensor within the inner ear of its host. Once the subtle differences in their form have been described in the literature, they can tell an expert, like Dr. Adrian Rundle, what species they came from. (Dr. Rundle’s inquisitive nature has also driven him to examine similar present-day organisms, including woodlice!) Somewhere in his vast collection are a couple of unusual squid otoliths from Bracklesham Bay whose descriptions have not yet been published. He will, he says, get round to it one day. Can’t be soon enough for one of them . . .
I’m an undescribed species from Bracklesham Bay;
An anonymous otolith, me,
From the ear of a squid. I told it which way
Was ‘up’, and which ‘down’, in the sea.
I’d a purpose in life, and that was terrific,
But my squid has long rotted away.
I’m an ‘earstone’ of sorts, but nothing specific –
What species I am, none can say.
Microfossil I may be, but I still have my pride,
And I’m desperately seeking ID.
Put me under you microscope, peer down inside,
And describe to the world what you see.
All things have descriptions, from microbes to men,
So please, Dr. Rundle, go to it:
Stop messing with woodlice, pick up your pen –
It’s a tough job, but someone must do it.
[Image: researchgate/Malcolm B Hart (scale bars = 0.5 mm)]
According to her Mum, a certain young lady (nearing her first birthday) seems to have a certain rapport with local pond life.
You won’t find her driving a truck
Or up to her knees in cow muck,
But this baby’s skill
Gives her parents a thrill –
For Jess can converse with a duck!
History was not my strong point, but it taught me some other valuable lessons.
Oh, how I hated History! As far as I could see
The regnal dates of kings and queens would be no use to me;
And learning who fought who, and why, I saw as interfering
With what I yearned to know about: Mechanical Engineering.
Although what history I learned I now have quite forgot,
I’ve learned, at least, what history is, and also what it’s not.
Objective and complete it ain’t: lest you should be deluded,
Historians select what things they think should be included.
A point to make, an axe to grind, a publisher to please,
Or just a dearth of evidence, from which they have to tease
A narrative that tries to paint a picture of the past –
But never yours or mine of course, for we are never asked . . .
And yet, in History I learned to question what I heard,
To check and challenge what was taught, examine every word.
The Mean Sidereal Year, he said, was quite precisely this;
But I had heard another value, not the same as his!
The History of the Calendar took second place, I fear,
To the accurate description of the Mean Sidereal Year.
We argued in a courteous way, remaining quite polite,
Each quoting different sources proving each of us was right.
Eventually, he sought support from someone who should know –
The Astronomer Royal at Greenwich. And his reply was “No,
Your student’s right”. Which shows just how an error’s propagated
When information handed down is not evaluated.
In the late 1970s, I found myself in Durham, whose gigantic cathedral sits atop a rocky promontory on a bend in the river Wear. The story goes that monks carrying the remains of the hermit-saint Cuthbert from Viking-ravaged Lindisfarne, ended up there after following two milk-maids looking for a dun (brown) cow. At that point, Cuthbert’s remains became immovable – a sign, they thought, that his new shrine should be built there. The present edifice was begun in 1093 by the conquering Normans. I went to look at it.
You can see the cathedral from miles all around,
Perched high on its river-bend rock
Like a castle, exuding its status and power,
To which pilgrims would piously flock.
I wasn’t a pilgrim, I sought no-one’s bones
And needed no guide to direct me;
I wandered towards it, just curious to know
How this Norman-built pile would affect me.
As I crossed Palace Green – a calm, peaceful place –
The cathedral itself seemed to grow
Till it loomed huge and menacing, blocking the sun
From its visitor, cowering below.
Persevering, I manfully aimed for its door –
Now ominous, solid and black . . .
Then, just like the coffin with Cuthbert inside,
I stopped. Unlike him, I turned back.
This fortress, this edifice, wasn’t for me.
No doubt it’s magnificent inside;
But its size reeked of wealth and the things of this world,
And its stones shouted “power” and “pride”.
I wondered what Cuthbert, the hermit, would think
If he saw where they’d buried his bones.
As I retraced my steps along old Dun Cow Lane,
I thought I could hear Cuthbert’s groans . . .
Around 62 million years ago, sea levels were falling and the northern North Sea was being stretched by tectonic forces. It began to split and a chunk of it sank lower, forming the Central Graben. Over time, it filled with sediments which included a large outpouring of sands and clays from the Moray Firth area. This ‘tongue’ of Scottish debris spread out into a fan on the sea floor which now has its own feminine moniker. It appeared fleetingly on a slide at a recent lecture on 3-D seismic surveying.
In the North Sea, a fan has been seen
By a seismic surveying machine –
It’s a sediment tongue
Formed when mammals were young.
And the fan has a name: it’s Maureen!
Proposals submitted by the UK Penetrator Consortium (led by a UCL group at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory) under the ESA Cosmic Vision program envisage half-metre-long “micro-penetrators” being deployed from orbiters and directed at around 300 m/s straight down into the top few metres of the surface of unsuspecting Solar System bodies. They have included “MoonLITE”, in which interesting parts of our own Moon would be impacted by four penetrators, and later ideas for gathering data from moons of Saturn and Jupiter. At the moment, though, they’re still just proposals . . .
Look out, Enceladus! Look out on Titan!,
Look out, the Moon’s old regolith dust!
They’re planning to fire a whopping great bullet
To penetrate into your unwary crust.
Europa, as well, is a possible target –
The Jovian moon with a cold icy shell
Whose surface has cracks, caused by huge tidal forces,
Through which might leak water – organics as well?
“Is it life, Jim, but not as we know it, perhaps?”
Is one question they really would like to get solved:
Not Little Green Men; but molecules instead –
Indicators that life of some sort has evolved.
On the Moon, they’d be looking for evidence of water,
Especially in craters lying close to its poles,
And probing the far side’s untested geology
With their sleek high-velocity ESA moles.
But maybe the whole thing is not going to happen –
Will it lie dormant, along with MoonLITE?
Can Europe support such a grand ‘Cosmic Vision’
When government cash is so terribly tight?
This was a solid pink block of pink stuff in a tin which had to be vigorously scrubbed with a rotary action of the toothbrush so that the foam produced would transfer to the bristles. It seemed to last for ever. Children were warned that ‘Dragon Decay’ would attack your ‘Ivory Castles’ if you didn’t use it. (Before my time, the Dragon had been a Giant; but whatever he was, he managed to breach Mr Gibbs’s defences without too much trouble.)
“It’s Gibbs Dentifrice,” my parents would say.
“It’s the best way we know of keeping at bay
The terrible spectre of Dragon Decay.
You must brush your teeth well, at least three times a day.”
I expect you remember. It came in a tin
Containing a block of bright pink stuff within
Which you’d scrub with your toothbrush, and then you’d begin
To shine up your gnashers for a sparkling grin.
More fun, though, was toothpaste, in tubes you could squeeeeeze
And squirt out a mint flavoured sausage with ease;
And red, white and blue stripes appeared by degrees!
But I still feel nostalgic for Gibbs Dentifrice . . .
It’s Christmas 2011, and there’s a recession on. In Horsham, the King’s Head is still closed, and budgets are having to be cut, yet the town’s restaurant count keeps rising.
It’s Christmas in Horsham!
There’s room at the inn,
But it’s still boarded up
So you cannot get in.
It’s Christmas in Horsham
With restaurants galore!
(If money’s so tight,
Why’re they opening more?)
It’s Christmas in Horsham!
You can shop till you drop;
But Broadbridge Heath Leisure
Is faced with the chop.
It’s Christmas in Horsham!
Our young folk won’t cheer,
For their Youth Clubs are threatened
With closure next year.
It’s Christmas in Horsham!
Unemployment’s so high
That it’s tough for our NEETs,
Whatever they try.
The recession is biting,
The future’s unclear
But it’s Christmas in Horsham,
So, er, be of good cheer . . .
A trolleyhog is a sub-species of supermarket shopper which has acquired an evolutionary advantage by impeding the hunting-gathering activities of others.
Trolleyhogs are trouble: they are crafty, they have guile,
And they’ll park their laden trolley in the supermarket aisle
Not parallel, but crosswise, so blocking off your route
As they dither over vegetables and dally round the fruit.
Trolleyhogs are clever: they can sense, from far away,
The place they should be stationed to cause the most delay.
Where aisles are at their narrowest, that’s where they’ll meet a friend
And talk about the weather. Cor, it drives you round the bend!
Trolleyhogs aren’t focussed, they’re in a dreamlike state
Until you want to pass them, when their trolley will rotate
As they spot the very thing they didn’t know they needed.
They’ll then do all they can to ensure your way’s impeded.
Trolleyhogs will strike when nobody expects it
And drive all other shoppers in frustration to the exit –
Survival of the fittest! Red in tooth and claw,
A trolleyhog attack will clear the busiest store.
But I have a wicked wheeze to thwart their evil plan
Of blocking shoppers’ movements by whatever means they can.
I’ll grab the mike in Sainsbury’s: “In Tesco’s,” I will shout,
“The aisles are flowing freely and there’s room to move about!”
They simply can’t resist an aisle that’s blockage-free:
It’s like a red rag to a bull, or nectar to a bee.
They’ll turn around and hurry to the exit without stopping,
And go and clog up Tesco’s – then I can do my shopping!
(Actually, of course, by this time a Sainsbury security person would have appeared and offered to do something interesting with my own trolley and my neck. I’d claim poetic licence, but I doubt it would work.)
These things have been appearing on more and more roofs just lately, probably driven by a generous financial incentive from Her Majesty’s Government (oh, and people’s concerns about climate change, of course). They’re supposed to be silent, but listen carefully . . .
We are your solar panels, monocrystalline, aloof.
We soak up all the sunshine that irradiates your roof
Those clouds are not a problem: they still let through radiation*
Which we export to the National Grid to power up the nation.
We’re bolted to the rafters and we’re here for years to come,
Exposed to all the elements, but we will not succumb.
We don’t mind rain, especially when our fronts have got all mucky –
It washes off the pigeon poo as well, if we are lucky.
At night we’re quite redundant, for the stars are just too weak;
And even when the moon is full, it’s empty, so to speak.
But when the Sun wakes up again, he sends us back to work,
We’ve got no choice, he is our boss and will not let us shirk.
So what do we get out of it? A share of what we earn you?
Some hope! We get the feeling that our problems don’t concern you.
This boredom and monotony will send us round the bend –
The novelty’s worn off now. When will it ever end?
The Feed-in Tariff income’s yours, but what’s in it for us?
Not a lot, it seems; but as we can’t kick up a fuss
We’ll have to make the best of things: security, the view,
Birdwatching and stargazing – well, there’s nothing else to do . . .
* True, but any cloud seriously reduces the amount!
This little-recognised species, now known to be important in passing on experience, ideas and inventions to succeeding generations, did not exist during the Palaeolithic, when early humans lived and hunted in small groups and repeated climate changes forced them to move and adapt. Lives were short and blue-sky thinking was not the first priority for most people. But here, a young, brighter-than-average homo heidelbergensis describes how he once gave it a go:
“Life in the Stone Age is brutish and short.
Our hunting techniques haven’t changed:
Our elders die young, so we youngsters aren’t taught
New techniques, and ideas aren’t exchanged.
“This week, we men slaughtered a mammoth or two.
Our adrenaline makes us feel brave,
But we’re knackered to bits by the time that we’re through
And we’ve lugged back its parts to our cave.
“So I started to think, with this big brain of mine:
If I rig bits of wood, hinged on pegs
To a platform and work them, back-and-forth, with some twine,
I could drive it around – they’d be ‘legs’ . . .
“Then mammoth retrieval would just be a doddle.
My platform on legs would work hard,
And, thanks to the grey matter inside my noddle,
I’d have time – I could be the tribe’s bard!
“But Granny had noticed me thinking. She said:
‘I have a solution, I feel.
Your Granddad invented . . . . . . . . . .’ And then she dropped dead.” Thus, the world was deprived of the wheel!
Eventually, homo granddadus evolved. Living longer and much more contented, He could pass on his wisdom, so problems got solved . . . And that’s how the wheel got invented!
This is the name of a field on Chesworth Farm, near Horsham in Sussex. It might, of course, have been named after a previous owner; but I talked about it to Old MacDonald (who had a farm) and he suggested it could be a corruption of ‘bare lag’, meaning an unproductive field . . .
Was Jenny Bare Legs in her field, I should like to know?
“No, she wasn’t! Nor revealed was ankle, knee or toe.”
What, no bare leg here? No bare leg there?
“No, a lag, ’twas a lag;
Everywhere a bare lag!
Jenny Bare Lags, that’s this field, a field where things don’t grow!”
You can get oil from organic-rich shales, such as those in Dorset’s Kimmeridge Clay Formation, but only if they have previously subsided deep enough (several kilometres) below overlying sediments to reach temperatures in the region of 100°C – what Professor Richard Selley of Imperial College calls “Hells Kitchen”.
Pack-a-clay, pack-a-clay, Jurassic man*,
With organic remains as full as you can.
Compress it and cook it at one hundred C
Deep down in Hell’s Kitchen – and then tell BP!
* There were, of course, no men around in the Jurassic, except those with poetic licence.
St George’s Land refers to the western end of what is now known as the Anglo-Brabant Massif (see map below), a band of ancient rocks, whose crystalline arrangements were altered by heat and pressure in earlier stages of the Earth’s tectonic history. In the UK, the massif is now buried deeply beneath later sediments; but such seismic activity as there is in the region seems to cluster around its edges . . .
St George’s land once stood up proud In old Dinantian times1, An island in a shallow sea With equatorial climes2.
The island’s ancient basement rocks Resisted being drowned, While Carboniferous Limestones Were laid down all around.
St George grew overconfident Of his Dinantian mapping; And pride, they say, precedes a fall – Our Saint was soon caught napping.
Gondwana3, that land-grabbing thug, Was moving north apace; It squeezed the Rheic Ocean4 dry And captured George’s place.
Poor George – disheartened and depressed – Subsided and was gone, Part of Pangaea’s basement now. And yet, St. George lives on . . .
For round the margins of his Land, His seismic spirit grumbles: He last was felt in Lincolnshire5 As subterranean rumbles.
1. They were part of the early Carboniferous Period, around 340 million years ago (give or take 20 million years or so). 2. That’s because the area of crust on which St. George’s Land stood, while being dragged northwards by the Earth’s churning mantle, was then close to the Equator. 3. This was a huge single ancient continent which incorporated most of today’s southern hemisphere land masses. 4. This ancient ocean, between Gondwana and the Rest of the World, first appeared during the Cambrian Period (some 500-odd million years ago) but disappeared as Gondwana’s progress northwards created a new, single continent, Pangaea. 5. For ten seconds, just after midnight on 27 February 2008, registering 5.4 on Charles Richter and Beno Gutenberg’s ‘Richter’ scale, with nine aftershocks over the following weeks (Wikipedia).
A new vocabulary is needed to describe how legless land creatures move. Worms, for example . . .
I have thought up a special new term
To describe how the common earthworm
Smoothly slithers around
All over the ground.
It’s “wigglysquigglysquirm”.
A slithery, slippery worm,
As every child can confirm,
Has no legs, toes or feet
And is quite incomplete
Without wigglysquigglysquirm.
To experience the way of a worm,
With your arm held quite steady and firm
Put a worm on your hand –
Then you’ll soon understand
How to wigglysquigglysquirm!
[Photo: Tim Eisele (somethingscrawlinginmyhair.com)]
Isaac Newton (1642–1727), born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, did well at school in Grantham and went on to Cambridge University in 1661 with a keen interest in philosophy and mathematics. Shortly after getting his degree, the university closed as a precaution against the spread of the Great Plague. Newton spent two productive years at his home in Woolsthorpe before returning to Cambridge in 1667. He wrote reams on a wide range of subjects, invented the reflecting telescope that still bears his name, became a Professor of Mathematics, a Member of Parliament and the Master of the Royal Mint. On a personal level, I owe it to his fertile brain that I was able to find employment in interesting areas of engineering.
Isaac Newton of Woolsthorpe was bright:
With a prism he split the Sun’s light
Into colours. And then,
With a prism again,
He combined them once more – and made white!
Space, he believed, was a frame
And time for all folk was the same;
The two were distinct,
And not interlinked
As ‘space-time’, as Einstein would claim.
It was Newton’s keen mental resources
That put right our thinking on forces:
His three laws of motion
Were a brilliant new notion
For working out planetary courses.
What was it, he wondered, gave traction
To the apple whose legendary action
Raised questions profound
By its fall to the ground?
It was gravity’s fatal attraction.
And in maths he had clever ideas,
But wouldn’t divulge them for years.
(He thought there’d be ructions
If he published his ‘fluxions’
And feared the contempt of his peers.)
Inventor, Mint Master, MP:
Isaac Newton would tackle all three,
Plus religion and science
(An unholy alliance!),
And that ancient pursuit, alchemy.
It’s to Newton I owe my career
As a research-inclined engineer.
When I used his equations,
On many occasions
I could sense the great man hovering near . . .
In which certain rather young people are shown some of the sights. (The direction of London is typically ‘up’ to folk who live south of the Thames; please feel free to substitute ‘down’ if it better reflects your own geography.)
We’re going up to London –
We’re going there by train.
We’ll spend the day in London
And then come back again . . .
Well, now we’re up in London,
And we can hear Big Ben
(Big Ben’s the bell inside),
And hark! It’s striking ten!
London’s full of people,
Some travelling by bus,
Or car or bike or taxi,
While others walk – like us.
It’s time to meet our friends
In what they call ‘Tate Modern’.
As power stations go,
Tate Modern is an odd ’un:
A giant of a place
With lots of things to see.
It’s by the Thames in London,
And the best thing is, it’s free!
And while we’re up in London,
We’ll cross the River Thames
By the new Millennium Bridge –
It’s one of London’s gems*.
St Paul’s Cathedral’s whopping,
As are its entrance fees.
We won’t go in; we’ll stop
To eat our sandwiches.
There’s dinosaurs in London,
Inside a huge museum,
So now we’re here in London
We’ll pop along to see ’em.
Oooh! They’re big and scary.
We’re glad they’re all extinct.
(Or are they? That one there –
I’m pretty sure it winked . . .)
Our time in London’s over,
It was a revelation!
We’ve had a lovely day,
Now we must find the station . . .
We’ve just been up to London –
We went there on the train.
We spent the day in London
And now we’re back again.
* It doesn’t wobble any more, Well, not enough to feel – They fixed it with giant dampers Made out of tons of steel.
[Images: thesun.co.uk; wikipedia (x3); BBC News; historyreclaimed.co.uk; blogspot.com/; blog.commarts.wisc.edu; dreamstime.com]
Amelia happily skipped through the door
But tripped on a toy, and went splat! on the floor.
“My legs,” cried Amelia, “are terribly sore.”
“Don’t worry,” said Granny, “I’ll knit you some more,
“I’ve got some spare wool. What colour, d’you think?”
“My favourite colour,” said Amelia, “is pink.”
“Then pink it shall be,” Granny said with a wink.
“I’ll knit your new legs while you have a nice drink.”
So she knitted a leg: it was long, pink and new;
But she’d used all her pink wool on one leg, not two!
“Don’t worry,” said Granny, “I know what I’ll do.”
And the next leg she knitted was a beautiful blue.
Now Amelia’s new legs are a sight to behold!
The new ones are better by far than the old.
In the winter they’re warm, in the summer they’re cold,
They can run, skip and dance, and they stretch and they fold!
“What a clever invention,” said Granddad. “I know,
We’ll go to the market and put them on show.
‘Knitted legs!’ we will cry, ‘good for sun, rain or snow!’
And people will buy them, and off they will go.
“And soon, all the world will queue up at the door:
‘Your legs are so lovely, your legs we adore!
Oh Granny, dear Granny, please knit us some more.’
And Granny will take out some wool from her drawer,
“And sit down to knit, and she’ll cover the floor
With those luvverly legs you can’t buy any more;
And she’ll open her very own knitted-leg store
For legs, like Amelia’s, so terribly sore.”
‘Ordinary Time’ is a concept still used by the governing bodies of some Western Christian churches to categorise the relative importance of certain periods in their calendar, such as Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter: it numbers the Sundays for which there is no specific relation to any of those events. Its computation is impressively complicated and no doubt keeps those governing bodies occupied; it’s not the sort of time you could measure with a watch. Its name does seem a bit of an insult to Time itself, though.
Time just isn’t ‘ordinary’. What a thing to say!
Time’s a slippery character in every kind of way:
He passes, but he can’t be caught; you cannot make him stay;
And he’s the cause of all our ageing and decay.
Time passes by at different rates depending on velocity,
Says a certain Special Theory, fruit of Einstein’s curiosity.
Some folk say they’ve too much Time, and fired with animosity
They kill him. (Ah, but Time kills, too: it’s temporal reciprocity1.)
Time is hand-in-glove with Life, and this you must concede:
Time can’t be earned, but only spent, for thus has Life decreed.
He flies and drags, but never stops – an uncontrollable steed;
He can’t be saved for rainy days, or begged in case of need;
He’s got a nick, an arrow, and his tables are on show;
And if you put a stitch in him, it’s nine you’ve saved. Bravo!
Yet “Time is an illusion, and lunchtime doubly so”
(Ford Prefect’s famous counsel2, and he, of all, should know).
By now, you’ll know the burden of this irritated rhyme:
That Time is inexplicable, inscrutable, sublime.
As far as I’m concerned, it is a gross linguistic crime
To downgrade such a mystery to ‘Ordinary Time’.
1 “In reality, killing time is only the name for another of the multifarious ways by which Time kills us.” (Osbert Sitwell)
2 To Arthur Dent, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
The 2001 book The dinosaur hunters by Deborah Cadbury chronicles the way that people desperately tried to fit their ideas, observations and calculations into the powerful Biblical paradigm for the creation of the world, and the gradual emergence of a geological alternative based on the interpretation of physical evidence.
It’s been around for quite a time,
The Bible’s ancient paradigm.
Just look inside: the message is
In black and white in Genesis.
God’s universe-creating phase
Lasted, scriptures say, six days;
And Mankind was, we are informed,
By God’s own handiwork last formed.
But Eve and Adam went astray,
So Noah’s Flood swept all away –
The very first Catastrophe!
So is there evidence to see?
“No!” fundamentalists exclaim,
“You don’t need evidence. It’s plain
The Bible is the Word of Truth,
And God’s dictation needs no proof”.
The paradigm was very strong,
So no-one dared say it was wrong.
The things they saw, instead, they sought
To fit the view that they’d been taught.
Thus, hippo bones in Kirkdale’s cave1
“Showed clearly that the Flood’s great wave
Had swept these beasts from tropics distant
And smashed them up”. They were insistent2,
And scientists of great distinction
Declared: “The Flood had caused extinction”.
And, as the timescales seemed quite wrong,
They argued that “God’s ‘days’ were long”.
But in the Earth, a canny Scot3
Saw something cyclic: was it not
Erosion, settling in the ocean,
Then uplift? Eternal motion –
‘”No prospect of a start or end”?
Such views do paradigms upend!
Where now is Adam in this plan?
If Earth kept altering, did Man?
Were creatures not made at one time,
But changed, transmuted, down the line?
Was that the path that Man had trod?
Was he not specially made by God?
As fossils came to light, they made
The problem harder to evade,
For Genesis says in God’s plan
All creatures should be ruled by Man;
Yet giant lizards Mantell4 found,
Exhumed from Cuckfield’s ancient ground,
Were alpha-beasties of their day,
Long before the mammals’ sway.
The parsons could not reconcile
That awkward fact – the giant reptile
Which Mantell brought to prominence –
With Man’s God-given dominance.
They tried: “The fossil record shows
How God had made, in several goes,
The Earth more fit for Man to dwell in.
That must be what the Bible’s telling”.
The Reverend Buckland5 said, “What’s more,
These creatures red in tooth and claw
Made sure that death came very quick
To what they killed: God’s clever trick!’
Meanwhile, in France, George Scrope6 had found
A valley in volcanic ground
Which sat on top of gravels. That
Among the pigeons put the cat!
For if the Flood had dumped the gravels
On its Earth-encircling travels,
It could not simultaneously
Have shaped the valleys that we see.
Charles Lyell7 concluded, “There’s no doubt
That river action carved them out,
Its fluvial fluxions rearranging
All the land, which keeps on changing”.
And Lyell went on, “What I propose is,
To free up science from old Moses.
Our science needs no God, or Flood:
That paradigm is now a dud”.
It’s been around for quite a time,
The Bible’s ancient paradigm.
But it’s a poor theology
That disregards geology.
1: Kirkdale is near Kirkbymoorside in the Vale of Pickering, North Yourshire, UK
2: But by 1822, William Buckland (shown entering the cave) had concluded that the cave was a pre-Flood hyaena den
3: James Hutton MD (1726–1797)
4: Gideon Mantell MD (1790–1852)
5: William Buckland DD FRS (1784–1856)
6: George Julius Poulett Scrope FRS (1797–1876)
7: Charles Lyell Kt FRS (1797–1875)
On the West Sussex coast, Bracklesham Bay is one of the most productive fossil-hunting locations around these parts. Throughout the year the sea erodes undersea exposures of fossil-bearing clay formed some 46 million years ago. Given the right conditions, a variety of fossils can be simply picked up from the sand or beach, including: bivalve and gastropod shells, shark and ray teeth, corals and many other marine fossils. One man has been leading fossil-collecting hunts here since 1983, and has his own website.
On the sea-floor of Bracklesham Bay,
Tidal erosion each day
Jiggles and jostles
Its Eocene fossils
And washes them out of the clay.
From there, as the tides come and go,
They’re carried with each ebb and flow
Till they land on the sand
Of the Bracklesham strand,
Where they make a spectacular show.
If it rains, just put up umbrellas
And hunt for your first Turritellas, Nummulites, Carditas –
Oh, there’s nothing as sweet as
When you chance upon these little fellas!
You need a good day at low tide
And must scour the beach, eagle-eyed,
If you want to go back
With a fossil-filled sack
To show to your friends with great pride.
If you’re lucky, and in the right zone,
You may find that you’re not quite alone;
For who might appear
But the expert round here –
Yes, the Bracklesham King, David Bone!
Life must be so unpredictable for these things, especially during long hot summer days. But the media is full of advice on how to make the water we use go further . . .
I am a hanging basket
Who’s planted to the hilt.
I hope someone will water me,
Or else my flowers will wilt;
And then they’ll say it’s my fault
And throw me in the bin.
If I don’t get some water soon,
My chances do seem thin.
I think the lady of the house
Has heard dire news of drought
And hosepipe bans. So I suppose
That I must do without.
I hear her emptying her bath –
Such wasteful ways she’s got!
Those foamy gallons I could use
To irrigate my plot.
But wait! I hear her coming,
A bucket I can see . . .
A bucket full of frothy suds . . .
And coming towards me!
I’m now a hanging basket
Who’s lathered clean and pure.
And my flowers, now they’re watered,
Have a Radox-like allure.
Babies are such funny things:
Noisy, smelly, runny things,
Cost-a-lot-of-money things,
But on the whole, bright, sunny things
Who soon enough will crawl.
Children are go-crazy things,
Crash-bang, oops-a-daisy things,
Tumble-bump, knee-grazey things,
Bipolar, manic/lazy things
Whose writing is a scrawl.
Teenagers are lanky things,
No-money-in-the-banky things
Whose trainers are – ugh! – manky things,
Strutting, grunting, swanky things
Who never sit but sprawl.
Parents are old squarey things,
Sometimes not-much-hairy things,
Often airy-fairy things,
But usefully child-carey things
When offspring come to call
With babies (they’re such tiny things),
Or children (often whiney things
Who argue over slides and swings),
Or teens (those prickly, spiny things);
And yet we love ’em all!
[Image: minutemediacdn.com; childcare.gov [US]; Daily Mail; she knows.com]
The decibel is named in honour of the communications pioneer Alexander Graham Bell. Unfortunately, he had not come into aural contact with our new granddaughter.
The decibel scale’s logarithmic,
To cater for all sorts of sound
From leaves rustling quietly in forests
To aeroplanes flying around.
In today’s modern world, though, some noises
Are too loud to be measured in decibels,
So we’ve made a new scale for our granddaughter,
For Jessica’s yells are in jessibels.
On a visit to Beach House Park in the Sussex seaside town of Worthing, groups of mature white-clad ladies and gentlemen were rolling big black balls towards little white balls on a dead flat, closely mowed rectangular patch of grass. I searched the internet for more details, so that I could appear more knowlegable next time.
On the bowling greens of Worthing,
Where the rinks are flat and true,
The players are all dressed in white –
It’s what they like to do.
A wood is rolled with careful aim
Towards the distant jack.
(It’s not as easy at it looks:
It takes a certain knack.)
The wood is not a simple sphere,
So its bias makes it swerve;
But that player knew exactly how
Her bowl was going to curve.
Her forehand draw had just the weight,
And she’d aimed it to the right,
To take it on its left-curved way
To the jack so small and white.
The other players roll their woods
And build a scattered head
Of bowls around the jack; but those
That hit the ditch are dead.
And when the end is finished,
And the players’ shots are scored,
The losers clap the winners,
Which is their just reward.
For the bowling greens of Worthing,
Where the grass is short and fine,
Are sanctuaries of manners
From a now too-distant time.
There is a service, available to internet users, that delivers one unusual word every day. This was today’s word – it means bragging or boastful, and comes from the Greek for bold. A friend wondered when he might ever be able to use it, so I offered this suggestion.
In matters anatomical
Or sightings astronomical,
To claim your work’s canonical
Is seriousously thrasonical.
Sign designers should take into account the broader effects of their work . . .
I’m recovering from mental abuse.
Whilst driving, admiring the views,
My progress was halted
When my brain was assaulted
By a sign that read: “Sign not in use”.
So-called Sussex ‘Marble’ is also known as winklestone, Paludina limestone, Bethersden Marble, Charlwood Stone, Laughton Marble, and Petworth Marble. But whatever it’s called, its defining characteristic is the particular type of fossil snail whose sectioned shell gives the stone its unique character: the freshwater gastropod Paludina (now known as Viviparus). In the past, other shelly limestones, especailly those containing the bivalve Cyrena, were probably passed off as Sussex Marble.
To claim that ‘Sussex Marble’ is a marble isn’t right –
It’s a limestone in the beds of old Weald Clay.
But it takes a lovely polish, so it shines up nice and bright
Once you’ve dug it up and carted it away –
And polishing reveals its ancient snail-encrusted core.
What Latin name would suit its Weald demeanour?
They came from boggy places, these old fossil shells of yore,
So from palus (meaning marsh) came Paludina*.
(Beware of ‘Sussex Marble’ though, with bivalves peeping through –
Not a single sectioned snail-shell to be seen.
It isn’t Sussex Marble with its Paludina crew,
These bivalves are Cyrena – ‘sovereign queen’.)
*The pronunciation of this word was a puzzle (I had a Latin-free education). My original sources suggested Pal-u-DYE-na, but reader John Oakes remembers it as Pal-u-DEE-na, which seems more natural. I have amended the second verse accordingly.
The barcode tag on an article bought in a well-known chain store declared, rather immodestly, I thought, “Intelligent tag”. So, when I couldn’t find one of the store’s customer facilities, I decided to test it.
If this tag’s so intelligent,
I’ll ask it where the Gent’s is . . .
It doesn’t know! It’s labouring
Under very false pretences.
Giant ants are today found in tropical areas such as central Africa, but a 50 million year-old giant queen ant fossil (Titanomyrma lubei) over 5 cm long has recently been found in Wyoming. Similar fossil species have been found in Germany and the Isle of Wight. The Eocene temperature occasionally rose higher than it is today, probably because of the release of greenhouse gases such as methane into the atmosphere; and land-bridges connected Europe, Greenland and America, so intercontinental interchange was possible. Her Majesty explains:
I’m Titanomyrma lubei,
The two-inch-long Queen of the Ants:
They’ve found my remains in Wyoming
But my family roots were in Hants*.
I and my giant formic forbears
Grew large in that Eocene time.
Global warming from masses of methane
Gave the Arctic a temperate clime,
So we left all our Isle of Wight cousins –
Dull stay-at-home timid things, they –
And set off on our grand transmigration:
Each queen in her turn led the way.
With no sat nav commands to mislead them,
They reckoned the best way to go
Was over the land-bridge to Greenland
Thanks to sea-levels being so low.
Once there, in the warm Greenland climate,
They sensed that, not too far away,
Just over the land-bridge to America,
New Titanomyrmaland lay.
When they got to Wyoming they settled,
And took to these arid terrains.
So I’m proud that my lubei lineage
Is enshrined in my mortal remains.
* In fact, following a ‘Home Rule’ campaign, the Isle of Wight has been politically separate from Hampshire since 1890; but Her Majesty could not have foreseen this.
A local newspaper placard announced: ‘Family tickets for Isle of White’. (Unfortunately, the website that had a photo of it has since ceased to exist, so here’s a pretty picture of IoW flora, instead:)
Oh, what a plight –
It seems last night
The Isle turned White!
(To my delight
It wasn’t right.
So don’t take fright:
The Isle of Wight
Is quite alright.)
In September 2010, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft observed liquid falling on the equatorial deserts of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan – this was equivalent to early April in Titan’s year.
When rain falls in Spain
It all falls* on the plain,
And (in Spanish) they say, “Look, it’s raining!”
But they shouldn’t complain
Of their watery rain,
For on Titan they’d say, “It’s methaning!”
About 1900 invitations to the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in Westminster Abbey on 29 April 2011 were sent out. Ours must have got lost in the post.
Our invite to the wedding of Prince William and Kate
Still hasn’t been delivered yet, and now it’s much too late.
Oh well, it can’t be helped. I’ll think I’ll nip down the deli
For something nice to eat, and then we’ll watch it on the telly.
This is a collection of original poems which began with some about geology, which is why it’s called Geoverse; but there are now poems on all sorts of things – life, the universe, and (almost) everything. Click ‘About the author’ (above) to find out who wrote them . . . To meet all the poems, most recent first, just keep scrolling down the page (there were around 650 at the last count). To find a list of poems on a particular subject, use the Index tab (above), or enter a term in the Search box (below right), or click a Topic (on the right). I hope you find something you like! Gordon Judge
It’s as though there’s a conspiracy to give grandchildren un-rhymable names. But at least the latest arrival has a name with a jolly rhythm.
Jessica Judge was born on a Sunday,
Jessica Judge made everyone glad!
So Granny and Granddad send love and best wishes
To Jessica Judge, and her Mum, and her Dad.
But what of the future? What will it hold
For Jessica Judge, still a baby?
We hope she’ll be happy, and healthy, and wise.
And will she be rich? Well, maybe . . .
The Street View facility in Google Earth’s photographic representation of the world lets you see what streets – and the houses and people in them – looked like when its car-mounted camera passed by. But something is missing.
Google Street View didn’t see me
With its panoramic eye,
For I had gone out shopping
When its camera drove by.
If they’d told me they were coming
I’d have looked out for their car;
I would have stood outside my house,
And I’d have been a star. . .
But no; I’m not on Street View.
It seems celebrity
Has overlooked me yet again –
You can’t zoom in on me.
Glendonite is an anhydrous, but structurally identical, version of ikaite, a mineral which forms only in near-freezing alkaline water. During a talk about how he was able to infer what the Arctic climate was like in Cretaceous times, the speaker described the technique he had used to search for this unusual material below the icy waters of Alaska. I felt that a Health and Safety warning was needed.
When next in the Arctic, ignore all advice sheets!
Geologists there who are looking for clues
About palaeoclimates, especially ice-sheets,
Should strip to their T-shirt, take off their shoes,
Then jump in the water (it’ll be nearly freezing)
And wiggle their toes in a meaningful way.
(There’s a breed of geologist to whom this is pleasing,
Though quite why that’s so, I really can’t say.)
The object of this masochistic endeavour
Is to feel for a glendonite lump with your toe;
And then you can say, feeling ever so clever,
“It was glacial once in these parts, don’t y’know!
“For glendonite used to be ikaite, see?
A hydrated calcite, that forms
In alkaline water as cold as can be,
But it changes as soon as it warms.”
(It loses its water, but its shape stays impressed –
It’s a pseudomorph, so I am told.)
But don’t spend too long on your glendonite quest
Lest you perish because of the cold. . .
A blog site is an unusual birthday present, but it will be easier to manage than a website.
It has been quite a slog
Compiling this blog,
So I hope that it’s all been worthwhile.
You might do much worse
Than to see if my verse
Makes you think, and perhaps raise a smile . . .
In transferring 360-odd poems from their ‘GeoVerse’ website to this blog, I came face-to-screen with each of them again.
Re-reading one’s old poems is like meeting long-lost friends.
“How time does fly,” you say, “I must admit
It seems like only yesterday I put you on the page.
You really haven’t changed one little bit!”
(The fact is, once I’d written them, the sooner they were gone And living far away in cyberspace, The better. Only then could this old brain relax and rest, And of their lines eradicate all trace!)
My daughter, when younger and into reading anything she could lay her hands on, once collapsed in a heap of mirth after reading the recycling message impressed on our glass milk bottles.
‘Please rinse and return your milkman,’
Said the bottle. Well, that’ll be fun!
I was thinking the day before yesterday,
It’s a long time since last he was done.
And milkmen do really need rinsing:
Their job is all work and no play,
Exposed to the foulest of weathers
And picking up empties all day.
The problem is, how should I rinse him?
Do I creep up behind him and hose him,
Or sponge him all over with water?
I’d better ask someone who knows him.
I’ll ring up my neighbour and check
What she thinks might be worth trying out.
“Oh, you don’t need to worry,” she answered,
“I’ve rinsed him – he’s just drying out.”
This is the true tale of two work colleagues, A and B, chatting. As A relates how, long ago, she had seen her ideal pet on television, B realises it was her own parent’s celebrated canine, whose name has been immortalised in verse (see World-wide-Wallace) and A moving tail.
“I’d like to have a dog,” says A.
“I know just what I’d like:
A very special animal,
Not any mongrel tyke.
“A long-haired mini-dachshund
Is the breed I have I mind,
A handsome-looking one; but that’s
The sort that’s hard to find!
“But, once, the perfect dog for me
Appeared on television
Eleven years ago, at Crufts;
So now I’m on a mission.
“Do you know where one might be found
To offer me some solace?”
“Amazingly, I do,” cries B,
“He’s Mum and Dad’s – he’s Wallace!”.
[Image from foreverpuppy.co.uk – it’s not the real Wallace!]
When something happens, your brain has learned to ask why. It wants to be able either to stop it happening again, or – if it was something nice – to repeat it. Science now offers a way of looking at the world that has removed much of the fear and superstition that troubled previous generations. But its “laws” are no more than well-tested best guesses at how the universe really operates.
Events without cause are a worry,
For we like to know why they arose.
“Help!” cries the brain, in a flurry,
“Is there a reason, d’you suppose?”
So it dreams up ingenious hypotheses
And challenges you to invest in them.
It often produces a lot of these,
But leaves you to set about testin’ them.
In the past, brains would posit that forces
Deployed by a devil or god,
Had summoned their mystic resources
To conjure up something so odd.
So we’d sacrifice, worship and pray
To the powers we thought were involved,
That good fortune would soon come our way
And our transgressions all be absolved.
But nowadays, science has taught us
A method of testing the claims
That our mental activity’s brought us,
So that what is most likely remains.
Yet “most likely” is never enough.
We describe our conclusions as “laws”,
But to say that we’re “certain” is tough,
For we’re not in control of the cause.
In 2004, astronomers discovered a collapsed white-dwarf star, BPM 37093, in the constellation Centaurus whose carbon core had crystallised into a 10 billion trillion trillion carat gem just 4000 km across*.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star!
Now we know just what you are:
A crystallized white dwarf, so high.
You are a diamond in the sky!
Astronomers have sussed you out,
Their instruments have left no doubt:
Your seismic oscillations showed
Your hot, dense core’s a priceless load.
Your carat count is astronomic;
But mining you’s not economic –
Fifty light-years is too far!
So keep on twinkling, little star. . .
*See this abstract from the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System
An assertion about tetrahedrally-bonded carbon, made by two well known actresses in the 1949 Broadwaymusical and 1953 film of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, was eagerly picked up by those who sell small chunks of this product of the Earth’s mantle. Scientists have been more matter-of-fact about the stuff.
Carol Channing’s declaration
And Miss Monroe’s affirmation
That diamonds really are “a girl’s best friend”,
Is a claim without reliance
On the disciplines of science,
But one which high-street jewellers still defend.
In fact, a diamond’s assets
Are its highly polished facets,
Its hardness, and its toughness and its hue,
Such features corresponding
To its tetrahedral bonding.
Poor Marilyn. I wonder if she knew?
Vacuums have intrigued people for ages; they’ve philosophised about them and done experiments with them. A perfect vacuum – an absence of all matter – is said to be impossible, but that doesn’t stop people finding uses for imperfect ones. A vacuum of my acquaintance explains.
Nature (bless her cotton socks) is said to quite abhor me,
But astronauts in outer space are dead if they ignore me!
Keen picnickers with Thermos flasks unknowingly adore me;
And shoppers buy me sealed in packs, and take me home and store me.
Torricelli with his mercury, Pascal (who wrote a book*),
Von Guericke, and Boyle (and not forgetting Robert Hooke),
All searched for me with tubes and pumps, by which these icons took
As much air as they could from every cranny, every nook.
In the hemispheres of Magdeburg, I held back teams of horses;
And gravity works through me, keeping planets in their courses.
I’m hard to make and hard to break without substantial forces.
You’ll never make me perfect, though, whatever your resources.
Science and religion both agree I don’t exist;
And I’ve driven many physicists completely round the twist.
I’m inside all your light bulbs, and your Hoovers I assist;
Yet I’m hard to get to grips with, for of nothing I consist. . .
So it’s better if I just remain a cerebral construction:
Just think of me as ‘nothing’ and, by way of introduction,
Remember me whenever your new Dyson wields its suction.
But make sure you never meet me – oh, imagine the destruction!
* Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide (New Experiments with the Vacuum), 1647
The latest chart issued by the International Committee on Stratigraphy (ICS) no longer shows the period, from about 65 million years ago to 2.6 million years ago, familiar to geologists as the Tertiary. Its sediments filled the London Basin. This called for investigation (with apologies to a certain dead parrot).
The Tertiary is no more: it’s ceased to be.
It has expired and gone to meet its maker.
A stiff, bereft of life, it rests in peace.
It’s pushing up the daisies in God’s acre.
What scoundrel could have dealt the deadly blow
That sent it shuffling off this mortal coil?
The question needed answering, and so
I sought out Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle.
Could Holmes identify the perpetrator?
“I see . . .” the great man said, then “I see . . . yes . . .”
And that was all. I questioned Watson later:
“That’s just like Holmes,” he said, “I must confess.
“His answer seems obscure; but think about it –
Repeat it several times, with different stress.
The culprit will emerge, I do not doubt it.”
I tried it: “Yes . . . I see, yes . . . ICS!
I wondered how he’d solved this heinous crime.
Had killing off the Tertiary left a clue
That only this detective in his prime
Could see for what it was? And then I knew:
Those rascals, in their international meetings,
Had ordered that the Tertiary should not stay;
And Holmes had felt the shock of their deletings,
For Baker Street is built on London Clay!
A new Travelodge hotel opened in Horsham in January 2011. (This poem, a finalist in its launch-day competition, now hangs on the wall in Reception.)
Welcome, traveller in time and space!
Come rest awhile from life’s relentless pace
In Horsham, ancient Sussex marketplace.
First eat, then yield to sleep’s tranquil embrace.
The poet, Shelley, close by here was born
In 1792, one August morn.
Unconventional, his years by passions torn;
Not in his life, but later, came his dawn.
But you, who in these hotel walls abide,
Will meet his “sweet child, Sleep, the filmy-eyed”
As time holds still, let quiet repose provide
A life-renewing, thorough-cleansing tide.
And as you drift, let cares evaporate away,
Transformed by slumber’s nightly theatre play
Which wafts you softly to another day.
Then, traveller, arise and go your way!
Artefacts left by the first humans in Britain have been found in the midland and eastern counties of England, on the course of a now-extinct river named after Castle Bytham, where evidence of its existence was first discovered. It originally rose in the vicinity of what is now Stratford-upon-Avon. Feeling ignored, it has a couple of questions to ask.
Two million years before young William Shakespeare stole the scene,
My waters flowed past Stratford in a land so lushly green.
I was slow and wide and muddy, you couldn’t call me energetic –
Well, why flow fast when slow would do? I didn’t do ‘frenetic’.
But then the climate changed, and I became a different river
As the vegetation withered and the Earth began to shiver.
At last I had a job to do: to transport to the sea
Frost-shattered rocks of Birmingham as gravelly debris.
I flowed so fast and scoured my bed so deeply that I stopped
That other river’s header flows from Wales – the Thames was topped!
With melting glacial water coming every Spring my way,
I was the land’s Prime Drainer – Bytham River ruled, OK!
But now I am no more. How are the proud and mighty fallen;
My course now only traceable in gravels, mud and pollen.
Will Shakespeare’s actors come to learn that once I flowed nearby them?
And will the town be known instead as “Stratford-upon-Bytham”?
Nature’s looters must wholeheartedly approve of organic gardening; but they don’t seem to have hearts . . .
Growing veg can drive a chap manic,
As he battles with forces satanic:
All those pigeons and slugs
And whole armies of bugs
Make it difficult being organic.
It’s long, and it’s green, and it’s sleek. Its flavour is subtly weak, Well sautéed, of course, With a creamy cheese sauce: Mouthwatering and luscious, the leek!
Gordon Judge, 1999 to present. Please contact me at mail.geoverse@gmail.com if you'd like to use any of the poems.
Thanks:
With thanks to my sources of inspiration: my wife and her Open University books; Horsham Geological Field Club, its speakers and field trips; my son for sharing his internet space; and, er, well, life, really.
[Images: wikipedia]
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