The end of the world in 2012 ?

The Pyramid at Tenochtitlan.

He had ridden the long trail from Chichén Itzá and he was tired, very tired. He was in no mood to deal with the jobsworth on the gate who was certain to be a Mayan. They always were in the front of the queue for any job that involved bossing people about. Mayans were good at languages and often went into the priesthood and so looked down on the likes of him, a mere Toltec. The fact that he had designed and overseen the building of the fabled pyramid at Chichén Itzá didn’t change a thing, he knew he would be seen as an artisan during his time here in Tenochtitlan.

      ‘Name?’ said the jobsworth, consulting his clipboard. Why did they always have to have clipboards?

      ‘Itzpapaloti,’ he answered, thus confirming his Toltec roots.

      ‘Well sunshine or whatever you call yourself, you can’t come on this site wivout a hi vis jacket.’

      ‘Why?’ asked Itzpapaloti in a spirit of innocent enquiry.

      ‘Health and safety rules, innit, people on site need to be able to see you.’

      ‘How is your eyesight,’ asked Itzpapaloti who was seeing an opportunity to enjoy himself.

      ‘Excellent mate,’ said the Mayan neanderthal, ‘I saw you coming when you and your donkey was at least a kalkaan down the trail.’

      ‘Mule,’ he corrected reasonably. ‘You could see me that far away? I am impressed.’

      ‘Yes, us Mayans are known for our good eyesight, it’s in our jeans, see.’

      ‘So, if you could see me from a kalkaan away, why do you need me to wear a Hi Vis jacket to see me just a couple of kaans away on the other side of the site?’

      ‘Err, rules innit, more than my jobs worth to let you in without one.’ Itzpapaloti had had his fun so he pulled a Hi Vis jacket out of one of the saddlebags and put it on.

      ‘I am the Chief Engineer for this project and will be here for the next five years so we need to get to know each other, what is your name my good man?’ He was really good at patronising people when he put his mind to it.

      ‘Err, it’s Ah Chun Caan.’ He put out his hand, taking Chun by surprise so he took it for a shake, he wouldn’t normally deign to shake hands with an Toltec. Itzpapaloti had a quick look around the site and then went back down to the village to fix up some digs.

‘Why are we building this pyramid Master?’ asked Tlaloc who was named after the God of rain and vegetation and destined by his name to be a helper.

      ‘The King wants us to build a calendar and I convinced him that we should use a pyramid to take the astronomical observations so that we can calibrate and check the operation of the calendar. It will take us about five years to build it so it will keep us fed for at least as long as that.’

      ‘That sounds good to me,’said Tlaloc. ‘What does your name mean by the way?’

      ‘I am named after the God of butterflies and I am destined to be a leader.’

      ‘But why does the King want us to build a calendar?’

      ‘As far as I can work out, it is something that the Chief Mayan priest told the King was necessary but I don’t understand it myself. I think I’ll go and ask him. He is an old friend of mine. His name is Chilam Balam, because he is a shaman.’

      Itzpapaloti made an appointment to see the priest at three in the afternoon of the following Tuesday, straight after he had finished the last sacrifice for the day. He walked into his office as he was washing the blood off his hands and drying the ceremonial sacrifice knife.

      ‘Hi Chilly, how is the shaman thing going?’ He asked to break the ice.

      ‘Hi at you Itzy,’ said his old mate, they had been in shaman school together for the first couple of terms but he had dropped out. Fainting at the site of blood is not an ideal qualification for a Mayan priest. ‘It’s not too bad but the supply of virgins for the daily sacrifice is drying up, young people just don’t seem to have any ambition these days.’

      ‘So, tell me about the pyramid we are building, what is it all about?’ Itzpapaloti asked.

      ‘Grab yourself a cup of cocoa and I’ll tell you the story,’ said Chilam Balam. He made himself comfortable in his office hammock while Itzpapaloti took the one nearest the door, you never know with a priest, and he started to tell him this story.

The King, Yik'in Chan K'awiil, was getting old and, like many old people, he had fixed ideas of how he liked things to be. Unlike many old people, he also had the power to make things just how he liked them. Anyone who disagreed with him tended to become rather dead. One of the things he disliked most was watery cabbage so he wanted something done about it. The priests got together and set up a research project with funding they weasled out of the King.

      After a year of effort the Shaman Onan Research Project ( SORP ) came up with an idea that worked. It produced cooked cabbage that was flavoursome but free of excess water. They called it a solid and liquid phase brasica separator for long, or colender for short. Because of the secrecy required, they obviously could not show their prototype to anyone but presented some of the cabbage produced by it to the King. He was delighted and authorised them to spend as much Toltec gold as necessary to build a production model.

      They put the job of Project Manager out to tender. After many interviews, they selected Mixcoatl. He had never built a colender before but he seemed to know what he was talking about although his spelling left a lot to be desired. He set about designing the calendar and decided to use an astronomical observation system to ensure the angles, from which the dates were to be calculated, were precise.

The best shape for this observatory turned out to be a truncated pyramid so the site was selected, the ground cleared, materials selected and ordered and the construction started.

Itzpapaloti now understood what he had to do so he first upgraded his CAD system with a new patch and then set to work on the detailed design work. One thing he didn’t realise was that there was a bug in the software upgrade he had used which meant that each betán was undersize by one chan. This was very important as it changed the size of each dimention in the pyramid and so the angles observed by the astronomers. These results were then computed and the ITC rule number 37 came into play. This says that if your inputs are rubbish then so will your outputs be, however good your computer. This is known as ‘Garbage in, garbage out’ or ‘GIGO.’

      This wasn’t a problem for the Mayans as it just meant that the end of the world was predicted to be a long time in the future in 2012 instead of the actual year which is, of course, 3,017,237. The problem came when …well you know the rest.

      The other problem was that Yik'in Chan K'awiil never did get the tasty dry cabbage he wanted and several priests became dead quite quickly.

     

The moral of this story?

      Well I suppose it has to be that you should ensure that your Project Manager should be able to spell and your Chief Engineer should understand computer software version control.

      OK, I know it’s not the end of the world if they don’t get it right but … I said it’s NOT the end of the world.

     

Writing challenge 14th December 2011

The Office Party

They had seen the weather forecast so decided to hold the party in the big barn. Daisy was back from her trip to alert the other nearby herds to Operation Lysistrata so she and Gertie set about arranging and decorating the barn. They arranged the straw bales around the edge so that some of the older animals could sit and chat while the youger ones were dancing in the clear area in the middle. It was quite difficuly putting up the streamers and bunting, cows aren’t really designed for climbing step ladders and pushing in drawing pins but they managed.

      The pigs had volunteered to arrange the food so there were plenty of apples from the orchard and even some cider that they had been fermenting for three months. They had negotialed a deal with Henrietta and her sisters so there were about three dozen eggs. Henrietta had teased Porky about providing some ham to go with the eggs and then accused him of  not being fully committed to the party when he refused.

      Gertie had brought the cream so she made lashings of custard to go with the stewed apple desert. She saved some to make some special porridge for Billy the Bull as he hadn’t been getting his oats recently, well since Operation Lysistrata started really, apart from that escapade with Florence who had been feeling a little frisky one day. She had been told off quite sharply by her sisters in the herd and she assured them it wouldn’t happen again.

      The goats were acting up again and refused to bring any food. This was not a problem for them as they would eat anything, probably even Terry’s Dwarf Bread if necessary but they were always good on the Carry Oche as their eyesite was excellent and they usually got several 180’s during the evening.

      The swallows had been invited but they took a rain check until the spring.

      It was seven o’clock, time to start the fun. The animals turned up on time, even the ewes were there, looking sheepish as they were a little woolly about time. Sean shepherded them in, took them across to the bar where he got them started on the cider.

      The owls were wisely late as they knew they would be the last to leave.

      It was a good evening and things started to liven up as the cider went down. The dancing was in full swing to the music of The Wurzels. John Hunphries sang an excellent solo rendition of ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’. Some of the animals argued about who could make the best farm noises during the chorus.

      During the band’s break Sean got up and sang his party piece, I know there’ll never be another ewe. The goats’ choir were persuaded to sing a couple of songs, gruffly and even the mini goatlet kids joined in.

      As the evening wore on and the cider level sank, some of the animals got a little tipsy. A couple of the pigs got together in one corner and started complaining about the organisation on the farm and listing the changes they would make if they were in charge. The biggest goat challenged Porky to a fight, they had never really got on. Then Porky admitted to Daisy that he had always rather liked her and asked if perhaps she would like to come outside for a little fresh air? Daisy demurred, she had been quietly fantasising about Billy for the last hour or so and the last thing she had in mind was an amorous interlude with a pig.

      Henrietta was a very sensible hen and managed to stop a couple of the younger, just not chicks, who had been sitting on the farm photocopier. She didn’t know what they were planning but it didn’t look good. She looked around and saw that Sean was missing, as was one of the ewes. She had a look for them and found them in one of the feed stores, ‘discussing ovine balanced diets,’ they said but Sean appeared to be wearing muzzlestick which was a little unusual, even for him.

      The rest of the hircines were acting the goat as usual and had to be restrained in the byre, where the cider had run out.

      Adge decided that the band had done enough so they packed up and tractored off home.

      The animals slowly walked home, arms around each other, some declaring undying love for their friends.

      Daisy and Gertie were just about still standing but both knew they would regret that last glass of cider at five the next morning when milking time came around.

      It has been a good party and they agreed they would do it again next year. 

Writing challenge 8th December 2011 The Journey Home

It was a nightmare of a marathon journey. The three of us had planned it for several weeks, Kenyon wasn’t really old enough to understand. We hadn’t told the folks at home as we wanted it to be a surprise to see the two of us complete with their grandchildren. I am not sure who thought of it first but we both think it was probably Sheila.

      I was on a five year contract with BHP working on the massive gas project near Perth. Sheila was from Margaret River so she was delighted when the chance came up for us to move to Oz for a few years, she didn’t really like Surrey much although we had agreed that it would be our family home. The two children, Bruce and Kenyon got on well at school and loved the outdoor life. Bruce’s favourite word was ‘Barbie’ and no, he wasn’t talking about dolls. It was beginning to look as if I would be outvoted when the five years were up and, to tell the truth, I would be quite happy to stay in Oz as well, I just worried about the folks back in Farnham who were getting on a bit now and to be so far away if anything went wrong …

      First we told the folks that we were going off on a short trip up the coast so would be out of Skype and mobile range for a few days then we set off. The Quantas to Singapore was ok and we had a arranged to have a two day stopover which we all enjoyed but it went downhill fast after that. The Quantas A380 inbound was held up which meant it was going to be twelve hours late leaving so we had to cope with Bruce and Kenyon in the terminal as we had checked out of our hotel. After that there was a mix up on the seats so we had to throw a bit of a strop to get seats together.

      We finally got everything sorted, the plane took off and we relaxed although we had hoped the children would be tired but they had just had a long sleep in the terminal so Sheila and myself had to keep them entertained when all we wanted to do was sleep. I have never been so glad to see Heathrow. We got through the usual hassle with immigration in Terminal 4 and then they had rented out our car because we were late. It took an hour to get a replacement. M4, M25, M3, so much traffic! What else could go wrong now? We were nearly there and couldn’t wait to see the folk’s faces when they saw that we had turned up for Christmas.

      Around the town and then down the lane to their house. There was no car on the drive so maybe they were out shopping? We drove in and tried the door and looked through the windows. No signs of life. I knew they were friendly with the young couple next door so I went round and knocked on their door even though I had never met them. A youngish guy came to the door.

      ‘Hi, I’m David, Eric and Mary’s son,’ I said. ‘Do you happen to know where they are?’ He looked surprised.

      `I thought you lived in Australia?’

      ‘Yes, we do, but we’ve just arrived to spend Christmas here with them.’ He looked even more surprised.

      ‘B, b, but they drove up to Heathrow yesterday to fly out to spend Christmas with you, they wanted it to be a surprise.’

Writing challenge 30th November 2011 - Advent

Advent

It was the best of tines, it was the worst of tines. In fact it had been a forking awful day. I had been clearing out the stables for hours, pitching that odourous mix of straw and muck into a wheelbarrow and trucking it off to the heap by the side of the road where it gently steamed in the Autumn sunshine. I put the usual sign on top for passing rose and mushroom growers, ‘Pick your own horse manure, buyer collects.’ I then went back to bolt the stable doors after the horses had closed up for the day.

            The only good part of the day was that my son, Robert, had been helping me with the jobs around our riding school. He is eight and full of the questions that children that age ask and parents greet with mighty dread. It’s a bit like being on University Challenge when you should really be on Who Wants to be a …answering the first couple of questions. I mean, what do you tell an eight year old when he asks, ‘Why doesn’t the moon fall down, Dad?’ Do you answer using a simple Newtonian approximation with just a few of the equations of motion or Special Relativity to confirm the curvature of space using the gravity lensing of light as an example? No, I decided that it was no good hiding the facts of life from him, he would have to know eventually so I sat him down on the wheelbarrow, oops, forgot the pitchfork, and quickly went through the simplistic version of Quantum Physics with an explanation of the Higgs Field and the potential upset if CERN proved that there was no Higgs Boson.

            ‘OK Dad,’ he said, patiently ‘I understand all that simple stuff but why does the pub in the village, The Moon, not fall down, it is so old and it leans to the side a bit.’

            ‘I don’t know, Robert, that’s a much too difficult question for me. All I know is that my friend, Old Ted, hung himself in the Gents there last New Year’s Eve. That’s why  the toilets are now called the Kamikarzee. Come on young Bob it’s bath time and bed for you.’

            I managed to get him through the usual evening routine, bath, milky drink, into bed after saying his prayers – well his version anyway,

            ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,
            I pray the Lord my soul to keep,

            But not too long, I’ll need it soon

            I think tonight there’s a full moon

            If I shall die before I wake,
            I pray the Lord my soul to take.

            Heel and toe and laces too

            Why not take the whole damn shoe?’  

and then a story. We were half way through Tales from the Café, Volume one, you know that one about the last Red Kite in Snowdonia? Always has me in tears but Robert was asleep by the time I got to that last, sad bit. We had the discussion about possible Christmas presents of course. I said if he kept on about it I would tell Father Christmas not to bring him anything. He patronised me as usual and pretended to believe that stuff about old man FC. He had floored me last year when he asked me if Rudolf  flew using jet or rocket principles as it depended if he flew above the atmosphere or not. Kids!

            Today was the first day of Advent so we had to open the little door on the calender and fight over who was going to eat the chocolate. I tried to cheat by telling him he would have to clean his teeth again but I knew I was wasting my breath. He quoted an article from Two Thirty Magazine that said brushing twice a day was OK but any more would wear away the  enamel on his teeth. I gave in, as always. I wouldn’t really cheat, honest.

            I watched him as he slept. What would Christmas be without children eh? Quiet, peaceful, you could watch the Great Escape if you wanted or snooze through the afternoon.  No not the same, but better? No.

            It had been a good day in the Adventure Playground of life.