Saturday 30 July 2011

Blog author's biography #

All paper books have a short biography of the author so why should a blog be any different? Your task, should you choose to take part, is to identify and post as a comment, which fact in this biography is true.

*****


Richard had an idyllic childhood with Edwards Circus after being born at their winter quarters in Exeter. His parents taught him general circus skills but he excelled at the trapeze. His Ukrainian father, Sergei and his French mother Maria were the ‘Flying Colours’  so he naturally dropped into a catcher’s role and became part of their act which they often performed outside so he became the catcher in the rye.
            His parents ensured he grew up multi lingual so he stayed with the Ballet Rambo in Paris for seven years after passing the audition, without flying colours. His writing skills were honed by producing the programmes for their performances around the world.
            He defecated to Russia during a performance there with his mentor Rudolf Nureyev and then became the BBC Moscow correspondent for some years.
            He now divides his time between hunting wild boar in the forest surrounding his luxurious dacha outside Moscow and his bed sit in Exeter, over the Indian takeaway in Mary Arches Street, where he still enjoys the occasional trapeze performance when the circus is in town.
            His novels have been translated into Albanian. His fame in that country  is second only to Norman Wisdom. They have not sold well in England, possibly because they are only available in Albanian and the original Serbo-Croat. It is early days in his writing career, however, as he has only just celebrated his 90th birthday
            His interests include early Polynesian architecture, a fascination for quantum physics, research into the periodic table and other early furniture and cataloguing his extensive collection of circus programmes. He keeps fit by playing table tennis and darts.

Friday 29 July 2011

The gathering storm

It came closer and closer and it became evident it wasn't going to stop. It had started out near the Bahamas as a freshening breeze. As it tracked across the Atlantic it gathered energy from the warm Gulf Stream, picking up the evaporated moisture to form the increasing cloud layer. The Coriolis effect started to spin it so, by the time it had started tracking up the Western Approaches and passed Wolf Rock , it was a full on Atlantic depression with gale force winds swirling around the placid centre.
            Out of habit, he tapped the barometer. It didn’t like it as it was suffering from a bad case of aneroids but co-operated enough to show a rapidly dropping air pressure. He knew from his thirty years experience at sea that this meant bad weather. He was an old sea dog, from labrador, and understood these things. He waited, a long paws, and then jumped up, putting them on the peloris to check the heading.
            ‘Slow down a bit’ he ordered the helmsman, we’ll just poodle along for a while and ride out the storm. Left hand down a bit and head into the waves so we don’t get so much of a pounding.’
His first mate was out on the foc’stle swinging the lead.
            ‘Get back on the bridge,’ said the captain, ‘it’s not time for walkies yet, and put your lead away’
            The collie obeyed, putting down his sack of nutty slack.
            ‘I’ll just go and have a cat nap while things are quiet.’
‘OK,’ agreed the captain but make sure you are back here on time for the first dog watch’ He tuned the radio away from Terry Wogan as it was time for the shipping forecast.
            ‘Sole, Portland, Plymouth, Fastnet, gale force 8, increasing severe gale force 9, storm force 10 later, precipitation in sight, good’ intoned Donald Peteresen.
            ‘Nothing good about that,’  said Rover on the bridge wing, the old joke that the captain had heard so many times before.
            ‘You had better reel the kites in now, I know they save us a lot of fuel but we won’t be able to control them in the gathering storm.’ advised Churchill, ‘we’ll fight them on the beeches, Oh Yes, we’ll fight them……..
            ‘Yes, we have all heard that one, two,’ said three of the bridge team at the same time before bidding two hearts.
            ‘Who’s lead is it?’ asked Scotty.
            ‘It’s mine,’ complained the Staffy from Glasgow.
            ‘Well you should have put it away when the captain told you,’whined Scotty, who had missed his walk today and so hadn’t seaweed. He still had  some of the symptoms of bladderwrack and trumped loudly.
            ‘My trick’ he yelled.
That was the end of the rubber, the storm had abated, the sea was calm, the aspirins had cured the depression and the clouds parted to allow a sun beam to strike the bridge.
            ‘I thought we had finished with cards’ complained Scotty.
            ‘Shut up and deal’ barked the bridge team

On the beech

All was well in my world; the kettle was gurgling, a pristine packet of choccy biccies nestled in my hand and the opening theme of 'Loose Women' wafted in from the sitting room where a comfortable chair awaited my ample bottom. 
            There is a saying that ‘Pride goeth before a fall’ and this proved to be true in my case. I prefer the english version, ‘Pride goethe before the Autumn’ which is easier to understand except for the German poetry. I had built my tree house in Sussex, in Beech Avenue, those two magnificent lines of trees planted in 1787 by the Duke of Wayne just to the North of the South Downs, on the scarp slope of the chalk below Devil’s Dyke. The trees prospered and grew well over the years, benefitting from the calcareous soils and the water from the chalk, bursting out along the spring line above the clay.
            Losing my job because of cut backs was the trigger to change my lifestyle. I had worked in the banjo factory for twenty-three years. I was on the production line, responsible for a team of bridge builders, a very responsible job. You may not be a fan of the banjo but if you think they sound bad when in good tune then you should perhaps go and hear one that has its bridge positioned slightly too far south of the string null point. Sorry to be a little technical but it is important. The banjo company was losing sails so could only afford to produce three string banjos and motor boats. Two people were let go at the same time, myself and George Stradivari who was quite good at his job, for an Italian, but his banjos just didn’t seem to last, after three hundred years they were nearly worn out.
            I thought about what I should do with the rest of my life and decided to go for an alternative lifestyle so I got a simple job for 26 weeks of the year, polishing pebbles, and decided to live like Leonardo DiCaprio the rest of the time, on the beech. I started building my house in a tree with strong branches to support the weight but it was high summer and I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. Because of this my tree was on the edge of the avenue and fully exposed to the wind. I didn’t think it was a problem because the tree had been there for two hundred years.
            I was quite happy there and proud of my cosy tree house that summer snug in my bed under the Sussex Downs duvet with the kettle heating on the wood burner stove in the corner. You may remember that year, 1987, the autumn was late and so leaves stayed on the trees for too long. That famous gale came in the early autumn and destroyed many thousands of tree over the country, and Mr Fish’s career, he ended up on the beech as well. Sussex was especially badly hit, the shallow rooted trees of Beech Avenue suffered terribly, at least half of the trees were blown over – including mine. The kettle was just on boiling as I planned to have a cup of tea with the choccy biccys. The tree went over, the kettle emptied onto my chest, scalding me badly, the stove set light to the tree, burning my left leg. I landed on the pebbles and ended up with a bad attack of shingle. The loose woman didn’t fare much better either but, as she lived upstairs, that is another story.
            Life really is a beech sometimes but no longer for me. I went back to the banjo factory and begged for a job in the cat gut department – I worked there peacefully, stringing it out until I retired.
As told to the author by Oswald Formby

Thursday 21 July 2011

A pebble

A pebble
I picked up the pebble and asked where it had been ,
It was pink and black and glasslike and polished by the sea
On the beach at Lulworth, Southern  Dorset shore
It should be chalk, or flint or gault, why granite, here. I wondered
The fisherman was helpful, ‘for ballast, times a plundered’
When the ships came empty from Scotland they had to be weighed down
So shovelled rocks from a Scottish beach many miles away
Emptied out and dumped, not wanted any more
At Plymouth, Falmouth, Budleigh Salterton, maybe Exeter Quay
Longshore drift then picked it up, moved it to the East
Washed in the cove to Lulworth to find its resting place
Was it lonely, pining, wanting to be home?

Wednesday 20 July 2011

We didn't do green when I were a lad

This is a bit of a riposte to those younger ones who think 'reduce, reuse and recycle' has just been invented. Us oldies got there first!


We didn’t do green when I were a lad.

We didn’t do green when I were a lad.
         Yes, we collected milk bottle tops and handed them in to ‘help the blind’
We washed out milk bottles and returned them so they were used at least ten times. The milk was delivered by a horse and cart. There was a always a competition to see who could get out with a shovel to collect the horses leavings for the compost heap.
No food was wasted, any scraps the chickens didn’t eat were put on the compost heap.
As children you had to eat what you were given and clean your plate,
             ‘There are starving children in Africa who would be delighted to have what you want to leave’ was the parental refrain. I never had the nerve to say,
            ‘Why don’t you send it out to them then?’ That would have resulted in sore ears and a very early night.
We didn’t do green when I were a lad.
            Yes, presents were wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. The string and brown paper were kept and used the following year.
We didn’t have a fridge.
Milk bottles were kept in a bowl of water with a damp cloth over them.
The meat was hung outside on the cool side of the house in a meat safe made of zinc with lots of little holes in it to keep it cool and the flies out.
A man came round each week collecting almost anything we didn’t want – he was called the rag and bone man and used to shout out so that we knew he was coming. We could hear him because there was very little traffic because of so few cars being on the road. He loved scrap metal and would check it all with a magnet he kept in the pocket of his tweed jacket. He would only pay for ‘non ferrous’ scrap. And then only pennies.
 Another  man came round on a bike which he would prop up on a stand and then, sitting up on the saddle and pedaling would turn the grinding wheel he used to sharpen all our knives, garden shears, lawn mower blades and scissors. He used to sing as he ground the sharps back into our tools.
A French man came around about once a month with strings of onions and garlic hanging from the handlebars of his bike. No one ever bought any garlic.
             ‘That smelly stuff is only for foreigners’.
We didn’t do green when I were a lad.
            Yes, the dustcart had a trailer for ‘salvage’, any cardboard or scrap metal was welcome. The dustbin was small, very little was thrown out.
We had one open fire to heat the house, the ash from it went out to fill the pot holes in the road.
When it was very cold, I would be dispatched to get a gallon of paraffin from the hardware shop, in old jerry cans left over from the war. There was a choice of pink or blue. This was burnt in a Valor stove with a flat top which always had a kettle heating on it.
We sometimes had to use the paraffin in the oil lamps as there were often long power cuts in the winter evenings after school. Doing homework was difficult as we only had two oil lamps.
I used to wake up on winter mornings and see the ice flowers on the insides of the bedroom windows.
On cold nights we were allowed to take a hot water bottle to bed, otherwise it was shivery to push your feet down into the cold sheets.
We didn’t do green when I were a lad.
            Yes, when the sheets were worn out they were cut down the middle and the sides turned in and then sewn up up again so the thinnest parts were on the outside. This procedure was called ‘ sides to the middle’. The sewing machine was a foot treadle Singer. Everything you used was ‘Made in England’ except for cheap rubbish stuff that was ‘Empire made’ which meant it probably came from Hong Kong.
When the collars on our shirts wore thin on the inside, they were taken off the shirt by unpicking the seams and then turned and sewn back on again. When the cuffs went threadbare the shirts were converted to short sleeves and worn in the summer.
In the summer me and my mates used to go around the beach area picking up discarded glass drink bottles left by the ‘trippers’ and take them back to a shop to get a penny back on each one – which we quickly spent on toffees.
We didn’t have a car so cycled everywhere except for long holiday journeys which were taken on the train.
We didn’t do green when I were a lad.
            Yes, we grew all our own vegetables in the garden and only bought local fruit when it was in season. The imported fruit was very expensive although we always bought some of the bitter Seville oranges when they came in to make our annual supply of marmalade.
The summer gluts from the garden were processed and stored for the winter. Runner beans were salted in big china pots. I used to get the job of grinding the salt to a powder from the loaf sized bars of cooking salt. Apples were carefully harvested, wrapped in newspaper, put into cardboard boxes and stored in the roof.
Bruised apples were used for making jams, apple jelly or mint jelly. Mint picked from the garden of course.
Fruit was bottled in Kilner jars, preserving greengage and Victoria plums and gooseberries to eat in the winter with ‘top of the milk’ for cream.
Shallots were grown, peeled, salted and stored in vinegar for pickled onions.
Jam jars were kept and re-used year after year.
Each autumn we would dig trenches in the garden and empty the years compost crop into them, ready for the spring planting – only the hardy brassicas overwintered. ‘Sprouts are no good without a lick of frost’ went the local folk lore.
We didn’t do green when I were a lad.
         Yes, washing was a chore, we had to heat a kettle on the kitchen gas stove and then carry it along to the bathroom for a wash. There was an old geyser over the bath which had to be operated with great care to get the balance between water temperature and flow just right to keep the flame alight. We were only allowed a couple of inches of hot water in the bath.
We didn’t do green when I were a lad.
         Yes, everything was either saved, used again, used for something else  or composted.
Clothes were handed down and altered to fit.
Shoes were fitted with steel tips, called ‘Blakeys’, on the sole and heel, when they wore out they were taken to the village cobblers for repair.
We didn’t have television. We had a radio though and used to cluster around it in the evenings, near the fire in the one heated room, to listen to ‘Journey into Space’, ‘Round the Horne’, ‘Hancock’s half hour’ and incredibly, a ventriloquist show called ‘Educating Archie’ – on the radio - easily pleased or what?
The telephone was quite handy, only a five minute walk down to the post office.
The internet equivalent was a good gossip in the veg shop while waiting to be served. Mrs Jones from around the corner knew more than Google ever will.
         I don’t know what our carbon footprint was then but I am sure it was less than it is now.
Yes, I know we grew stuff, recycled stuff, ate frugally whatever was in season or stored from our garden, used very little energy, walked and cycled nearly everywhere and mended and repaired things rather than throwing them out and buying new but;
We didn’t do green when I were a lad.

Directions

Directions.

I see colours as directions so Blue makes me think of the South. I grew up on the Sussex coast so Blue is the summer sun shining on the Southern sea. White is the gleam of the chalk exposed in the face of the quarry in the cement works to the North, the dry valley through the Downs on its way to the dark, mysterious Weald beyond. Grey is the East where the boring Kentish industries start while West is best,  the fabled dreaming land where the daily panting steam trains rush through my village to the green holidaylands far away. I stand on the footbridge near the station as they pass below and get hidden in the black belch of the steam and smoke from their hot chimneys through the gaps in the wooden flooring. “Merchant Navy, Schools, West Country” we shout to each other as the monsters pass, boys in short grey trousers. I go home stinking of hot soot for my usual ritual scolding. Above is the clear silver moon shining with lambent light in the late evening.

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Collaboration story

This is a story that was started by William Barrett on the OU course forum. I joined in and it sort of went on for a while from there....


After two years sandpapering weasels in his father’s factory and a further two removing elbows for Alanov, Jim was ready for a new challenge. As the months went by, it became clear that no wizard or dwarf was going to knock on his door asking for assistance in recovering treasure from a dragon, so it was time to dust off the long-forgotten ‘p’-word and be proactive. A Submaster of Achievement certificate yellowed in his drawer, testament to Jim’s lengthy and costly education, but where had all the study of planetary geochemistry and Renaissance poetry got him? Kids straight out of school were shaving stoats, and from there it was only a short step to weasel finishing.
Jim was just about to turn in for the night - after another evening firing lasers at endangered species on his PC - when the ‘message received’ notification flashed up on his monitor. Mechanically, Jim double-clicked on the minimised application, and there it was …
.....a reply, finally, from the employment agency he had signed up with after a day of complete frustration a few weeks earlier when the abrasive wheel on the parrot polisher had thrown a shoe and so Jim had to work a double shift - have you ever spent 6 straight hours manually polishing pecking parrots that continually enquire if one is a pretty boy?
The agency was trying to fill a vacancy to fit wing extensions on long distance dragons to ensure they could get to Angina without having to stop at Malaria for a decoke and relight. The qualification required was a 2nd level certificate in substandard underachieving, which was above Jim's doughnut grade but if he could get his CV through the first sort and attend an interview, he thought he could talk his way into the job.
So he got his Citroen out of the garage and started polishing.........
...his resumé, making a point of 'bigging up' his limited experience in the maintenance of mythical beasts. Here and there, he added phrases like 'self-motivated self-starter' and 'blue-sky-out-of-the-box-thinker-up-the-flagpole on-the-back-burner'; a few triple exclamation marks here and there and it was perfect.
He pressed 'send' and poured himself a well-deserved can of diet tequila.
He awoke next morning, and despite having the breath of a walrus, bypassed the bathroom and rushed to his workstation to see if the HR guys at Unicorp Inc were as impressed with him as he was.
Somewhat surprisingly, they were, so ....
....when he called them on his puffin fone to see what the next stage was, he was delighted when they said the dragon job was gone but they had a vacancy for a semi skilled penguin grater if he was interested and the next stage was the Old Vic.
Vic was 87 now and hoping to ramp down to a position of part time walrus teeth cleaner - to improve their morning breath - and so spend more time with his family, wife Vac and daughter Shake.
Jim asked about the interview but the Hi Res guys said that the extra pixels were on holiday so it was just a formality, could he wear his best suit and tie, his shoe laces prettily.
Jim got the job, "Grate" he chirped and celebrated with a Barcardi and coal, coke was in sort supply, and had a real gas.
He turned up at Unicorp at 0800 Monday to start his new......
...fork-lift truck, but the battery was flat having been sat on by an elephant seal who'd found the waxing process a tad irritating and bolted for the cargo bay, flippering around the chops anyone getting in his way.
A few hours later, Jim and the other new recruits (who were mostly Inuit-Masai hybrids from the breeding programme) found themselves in what was called 'Induction and Orientation: Session I - Working with leathery membranes'.
The session leader was a grizzled Welshman of about 50 with his right index finger missing; his name was Jock Murphy.
"You go first", he said, tossing a basketball firmly towards Jim, "Tell us three things about yourself, two true and one false. If we guess which one's the accursed falsehood, you do a forfeit. OK?"
Jim looked over at the tank of half-starved piranhas in the corner of the room and wondered if Jock had been forced to plunge his hand in there on his first day.
"Oh well, here goes", he thought. He cleared his throat.
"When I was twelve ...
....I went to sea, the Queen but she was having tea under an umbrella with Mr C Robin and the mad hatter, Jack and eating his McVitie bisquits but as it was raining Alice asked me to change the mud guards, one of whom's uncle offered me a position with his company. This was a head stand followed by a triple salko and half pike - the other half had long since been eaten by the piranhas.
I turned down the position, jumped to my feet, and went back home wih the 2 x salko and the pi as I was very keen to start my new career with UniCorp in Seoul ( Good Korea move )
It was now time for lunch so they sat on the loading dock of the Bay Tree pub and made some FLTs with thick white bread to have with the chops that had been flippered by the eleseal, before Jim started on his third thread about how he didn't have igloo about farming maize - he wanted to bond with his co workers  - but was keen to learn sky diving.
He wasn't sure if he had convinced them but was glad he was a quadruped - or  forfeit as they are called in scientific circles because.......

Sunday 17 July 2011

Autumn images

Autumn Images
Chill early mornings with a pledge of coming winter
Cows swimming gently on a mist covered meadow
Nature relaxing with a gentle sigh after the frantic fecundity of summer
Leaves turning golden as they prepare gladly for a fiery death
Balmy air with a touch on the skin like rabbit fur
The crunchle of a walkers boot on the dry field stubble
A pheasant whirring into startled flight with a chirtling cry
Trees holding their breath as they prepare for the winter gales to come
Starlings on power lines queuing for their flight South
Robins parading proudly in their new winter style
Swallows have gone - will they swiftly come back ?
Children chattering back to school " where have you been, what did you do ?"
Holiday romances foundering on the cold reality of dreams destroyed - what might have been?
Tupping all done, life started anew, protected and secret  in ewe
End of the cycle, but the ring has no end - how did we do - where will it end ?
Winter is waiting
Spring is expecting
Summer is fulfilling
But Autumn is the best of all - counting your blessings and keeping a check - how many more until ten and three score ?
Give thanks for the harvest and the hope for some more, reflect on what's gone and hope for what to come, try to be better - to all, not to some.
My favourite time; the season; Autumn.

Fire at Brookfield

Fire at Brookfield
It had  been a mistake to hold the fireworks party in the garden of her  farmhouse, built many years before on the Brookfield flood plain. Daphne hadn’t expected that strong wind to come in from the West to guide errant rockets or still glowing cigarette butts to land on the roof. The thatch was still dry after the rain-free month of October.
Perhaps it was caused by a single cigarette end from that blazer clad Henry she didn’t remember inviting. She had only seen him once before, in the Bull, and she hadn’t liked him then. He smoked, which was bad enough, but his suicide weapons of choice were Du Maurier filter kings. Those expensive cigarettes in their cartons with pretentious purple panels framed by gold.
The fire had been quickly seen by those in the garden so there had been time to get everyone clear of the house and call the fire service. Her mistake had been to go back in and climb the stairs to her bedroom to try to save some of her precious photos. Up here she could feel the heat but was taken by surprise when a backdraft up the stairs goaded the flames to break through the ceiling and free the deadly beam, dried to kindling by the cascading centuries, to fall, trapping her legs. Only her pride was injured but she could not move with the weight of the old knotted oak crushing her to the floor like an over enthusiastic lover.
The immediate danger was the choking smoke which quickly filled the bedroom, making her cough uncontrollably, rather than the encroaching flames which were already raising the air temperature. She burrowed her head down to the floor to hoover up some remaining oxygen from the clear air layer clinging to the  floor boards. Then she felt the blessed coolness of the water spray from the firefighter’s hose as she fought her way up the stairs behind her partner who was protecting her with a water wall barrier against the flames and heat from his fan-set hose.
She had a sudden, panicky, irrational thought of Manderley. Had Becky managed to set the horses free from the burning stables or had the castle dor jammed, trapping her favourite Palomino, Jamaica, in? She remembered then that there were no stables at her farmhouse  and she didn’t  own any horses but she couldn’t look now. These crazy, fear - driven thoughts were for the birds.
‘I thought I was going to die’ she muttered to the first firefighter as she bent over her to check for injuries. ‘Can you get this off me?’
They strained to lift the beam, let it fall to one side and gently strapped her on the Neil Robinson stretcher ready for the medivac.
            ‘ We knew you wouldn’t die,’ they reassured her,
‘We checked the script and you are in the episode tomorrow’
Her over tensed body sagged with relief, she was desperate not to be written out of the Archers.

Peace 2

Peace 2

His stride shortened as he reached the steepest part, enjoying the pull of his muscles and the thump of his heart. He was tall and thin with greying hair that was still thick enough to need attention from the barber who now charged him eight pounds, down from the ten he had to pay until that sixty fifth birthday, five months ago. His was an outdoor face, tanned, with wrinkles around the eyes from squinting into the sun. Today that was not a problem as it was two hours set but he could see enough of the path ahead in the glim from the city beyond to keep from tumbling down the steep slope to the trickling burn far below.
He was wearing his favourite clothes, ones he knew suited him by trial and error during many hikes over the years in the wild places that combed the tangles from his thoughts. Thin threaded, closely woven trousers tucked into two pairs of socks to keep his boots snug and feet blister free. An old fleece with multiple pockets over a sweat wicking shirt and, of course boots, ones that were comfortable, familiar, nearly part of his feet, completed his outfit. His waterproof jacket and trousers, gloves and hat were in the rucksack, their weight a premium paid against poor weather.
He reached a favourite spot, unsnapping the clips on his rucksack before swinging it down with a practiced shrug. He bent, feeling the strain in his back, to open the snow cover drawstring and slide out his yellow foam garden kneeling mat which he placed on the bank to insulate his bony pelvis from the damp of the grass and the insult of the rocks. A small thermos next to provide over-sweetened coffee, not so much for thirst, more for energy to manage the four miles home.
Sipping from the plastic cup, his breathing slowed, recovering from the stomp up the hill, his heart calming as he lost awareness of its beating. His senses grew sharper as he sat still and mute; hear the evening breeze stirring last autumn’s dry leaves, see the loom of the moon as she began her silent silver rise and smell the juicy scent of the bluebells jostling for space in the beech wood, overlain with the stench of wild garlic he had unavoidably  crushed underfoot. The evening hush settled gently over the valley like a summer weight duvet, letting him hear the whispering rushes of the nocturnal wildlife snuffling out of their day time burrows to earn their living, all too aware of his presence.
His recent retirement allowed him to trade sleep for night walks in the woods when the mood took him, seeking the calm with no worries about being work alert next morning. He was free to sit here, hands sucking the warmth from the coffee cup, cherishing the peace of the place until the night air chilled his flesh and his old joints began to stiffen, driving him homeward.

Love growing at the garden centre

Love growing at the garden centre
The petals, once glorious in scent and hue, were now blackened and shrivelled so he ruthlessly snipped them the decaying flowers off with his second hand secateurs,  carefully gathering the flower heads up before adding them to the compost bin to continue their journey through the endless cycle of death and life, bringing succour to a new generation of flowers next season.
            The roses were always one of the best sellers in his garden centre so it was unusual to see some bushes still here until they needed pruning to bring them back to their former beauty. He knew that leaving the old petals there would result in the strength of the plant going into producting hips instead of new flowers.
            He thought this was a metaphor for his friendship with Ruth, who was the head cashier. She was not really what is usually considered a beauty but Kevin could see her inner beauty shining out when she talked about her love for the plants that she sold every day. She thought of herself as an adoption agency because they had been nurtured from cuttings in the garden centre until they grew to adulthood, ready to be found a good home with a kind family. She would refuse to sell a plant to customers if they did not meet with her approval, it was easy to find an excuse. Perhaps hint at greenfly infestation ot mention a possibility of an infectious mould. That was usually enough to protect one of her precious plants from a sad and abusive future.
            She liked Kevin but kept her distance because he was her boss and she didn’t want her colleagues at the centre to think she was trying to take advantage of their friendship to advance her career. She didn’t realise that they all wished they would get together for they were clearly made for each other with their mutual love of plants and flowers, each lusting after growing strong, healthy plants in the fertile,nutricious soil.
            There was a query on a price for the japanese maples so Ruth went to find Kevin until she tracked him down at the compost area and asked him about the right price.
            ‘Whatever price you think is right is fine with me, Ruth,’ he said. ‘You know I trust you completely’
Ruth blushed a little and thought how lovely he was, how he took care of the roses, even when they were blacked and dying. She went back to the till and sold the maples at a premium, they were too beautiful to be allowed to go cheaply.
            She day dreamed of Kevin working at the compost and became determined that she would be the good home that he would go to. What was good enough for the plants was certainly good enough for Kevin.
            She got one of her assistants to stand in for her and went to find him again.
            ‘I don’t want our friendship to schrivel and die like those rose petals,’ she said, ‘ I want us to nurture it so that it flourishes and perhaps grows into love’ She blushed again when he said,
            ‘Yes, no compost bin for us.’
They joined hands and walked off into their growing future together in the garden centre.

Patent application

Patent application

To/  Mr One Biertankard
        Patent office
        Planck Centre
        Swiss City
        Arcturus Five

From/  A Kranc

Dear Sir

I hereby apply for a patent for a traffic speed measurement and control system.
The system has the following components:-

A small plate at the front and rear of each vehicle. The colour of the plate will depend on the use of the vehicle and hence its allowed speed, some examples of speeds and calculated colours are shown below.. I can provide these colours in Ã…ngstrom units if you prefer.

1 – Heavy goods vehicle                                                          56 clicks   = Pink            
2 – Private family vehicle                                                         70     “       = Turquoise
3 – Public service vehicle such as a bus or coach              60    “       = Peach
4 – PPV – Person Propelled Vehicle such as a bicycle                 30    “       = Red

A LCD screen and a camera attached to lamp posts or road bridges.

            As this system is progressively introduced, I would expect that vehicle designers will incorporate these speed plates into the vehicle design, leading to some very camp HGVs.
As you know, the speed of light in our Arcturus system has been measured by our scientists at 8671 kph. This means that the speed of any of the above vehicles will be a measurable percentage of the speed of light. As they move towards an observer – the camera on the lamp post in this case – the frequency of the light from the vehicle will appear to increase because of the doppler effect and so the colour of the attached plate will be seen to change, moving more towards the blue end of the visible light spectrum. Speeders will probably be known as ‘Blueys’ in the future.
As you know, boy racers are particularly dangerous as excessive speed  results in a very high doppler shift, leading to microwave interference with mobile phones and extreme cases, involving very high speeds,  may result in X Ray emissions so pedestrians become see thru’.
The plates on the rear of the vehicles will all be red as we don’t want buses reversing at 70 clicks do we?
The speed limit of any particular stretch of road can be set by altering the colour on the LCD screen. This colour will be picked up by the on-board sensor in the vehicle  and indicated on its dashboard. This speed can be changed for small areas and depending on the time. For example it can be reduced outside schools at finish time and increased on motorways when the traffic is light.
The camera on the lamp posts / bridges will measure the frequency of the light coming from the vehicle, compare it with the colour on the screen and so can list all vehicles exceeding the speed limit.
A feedback loop can easily be put in place to control the speed of vehicles to the speed selected so there will be no speeding vehicles at all.
I think this will be a major contribution to road safety.
A futher possibility is to use a control vehicle running at a set speed then a convoy can be set up behind it with each of the convoy vehicles being automatically controlled to run at the same speed as the control vehicle thus increasing the density of cars on the roads and reducing the need for road building. We could call these convoys ‘Road trains’ or ‘Chemin des Fears.’
All of the above systems will use existing technology so should be cheap to install. It is easier now that all vehicles on the road are electrcally powered from the induction strip buried in the road surface which can also carry the control signals without any extra wiring.
If you grant this patent, I plan to adapt it for use on Betelgeuse 7 where the speed of light is 23.07 kph. This system will require extensive testing due to everyone potentially disappearing because of the doppler shift at relatively low speeds into the X Ray range. I guess this is why this planet is notorious for its low traffic speeds but surprisingly high road death rate. As you know, people are also often killed by thunderstorms because they don’t see them coming.

            Thank you for your consideration

Autoplex  Kranc – ITCV consultant.