WB 11 The eleventh hour

W B 11 The Eleventh Hour

Things were going wrong. No one knew why. 

People started walking through walls without the use of doors. 

Nuclear power station outputs varied erratically, 

One week two hundred people won the jackpot on the lottery - the following twenty weeks, none.

Traffic light started behaving erratically, red was sometimes followed by more red, rather than the expected amber and green - it didn’t help much with the traffic.

Bathwater started changing the direction of the eddy as it swirled down the plug hole.

Trains and buses started arriving on time.

Politicians started telling the whole truth.

Something was amiss with the world, chaos was taking over, one of those poxy butterflies in Brazil again probably but which one, there were several of them there and Brazil is a big place. Bigger even than Wales, some say.

People demanded that the government did something.The government did what it always did when it had no answer to a problem; it postponed the issue so it didn’t have to do anything while seeming to be strong and resourceful. It set up an enquiry led by a ‘past his sell by date’ lawyer. It would almost certainly last a long time and cost a lot of money. That is what lawyers are good at. The government fulminated publicly against the years of delay while being privately delighted at the time wasted. They didn’t worry about the cost, after all it wasn’t their money.

The lawyer, Sir Cholmondly - Smythe, was not quite as daft and doddery as he appeared. He had a sharp and enquiring mind, hidden behind a mild air of bewilderment when asking the witnesses who appeared before his panel, questions that pierced the hyperbole adopted by most civil servants and got quickly to the nub of the matter. One of his favourite strategies was to allow a civil servant to witter on until he was confident that he had cast enough wool over the eyes of the panel and mildly ask, ‘why did you do such a stupid thing when even a four year old child would have known better?’ This almost invariably brought out some gems that the witness would have preferred to remain hidden.

The government Chief Scientist was summoned to the enquiry and was quite certain that he was a match for a bumbling lawyer. Sir David Smart was to find out that he was wrong. He was dressed in pin striped, dark grey trousers and a white T-shirt with the slogan “Statistics means never having to say you’re certain.”

Sir C - S as we will call him, to save paper and ink, looked at Dave and thought he would have a go at tying him in knots - bowlines mainly - as he was an amateur sailor.

‘So tell me Dave, err may I call you Dave?’

 Sir David Smart had a hatred of being called Dave but knew, if he admitted to that, the number of ‘Daves’ he heard each day would increase a hundred fold so he mildly answered, ‘Not at all Smudge.’

‘Well then Dave, perhaps you can explain to us simple, non scientific folk, what is going on and what started it all?’

‘It all started when we were told, nay commanded, by the European Union that we had to change to binary decimal time’

‘Explain please.’

‘The SI unit of time was decided to be the second, which would be unchanged and determined by the speed of light, which as you know is constant - in a vacuum of course - at 299,792,458 metres per second. This also defines the metre so other units of length and time are calculated from this. There are now 100 seconds in a minute - now known as a centiminute and 100 centiminutes or 10,000 seconds in an hour.The day is determined by the rotational speed of the Earth and consists of 86,400 seconds. This means that there are now 8.64 hours in a day, or 8.64 x 10⁴ seconds in scientific notation. There were a few adjustments required to accommodate this new clock system but over all it made things a lot more simple and precise. Big Ben’s clock had to be changed from analogue to binary digital of course, as did all the other analogue clocks in the country. It also pushed Switzerland out of the watchmaking business so they now rely on cuckoo clocks, triangular chocolate bars and dodgy banking to earn a living.

That is only the first step, of course as the time units had to be expressed in digital binary - DB rather than just digital and in scientific notation, but I am sure that everyone in the country remembers the conversion calculation and can manage it quite easily. What about you then Smudge?

Sir C - S could of course, do this standing on his head, just not so well when sitting on his brain but he didn’t want to admit to this so he replied in his assumed persona, ‘not really, I have always found it to be a problem, perhaps you could explain it for the benefit of us dimwits?’

‘Certainly Smudge,’ came the reply. If there was one thing Dave was good at, it was patronising the intellectually challenged.

‘Take the time of half past five in the afternoon or 1730 as you maritime types used to call it. This is of course seventeen hours and 30 minutes through the day. if you first convert this to seconds you get;

17 x 60 x 60 = 61,200 seconds

Add 30 x 60 = 1,800 seconds

Total = 63,000 seconds

Convert to scientific notation = 6.3 x 10⁴

This is simple and straightforward.

Now convert to binary using the simple method gives 1111011000011000

So instead of saying half past five in the afternoon, you simply say 111011000011000. This is also the number of seconds since the last midnight. I think you will agree that this is simpler and more precise and it makes the design of digital clocks that much simpler. People soon got used to reading time in this way.

The main problem was that computers are very good with this method because time is now expressed using their language but it increased the data storage required and because if the increase in accuracy, it reduced the amount of randomness required. This meant that the randomness had to be increased  in other areas by exactly the same amount to keep the quantity of randomness at the same level. This is known as the third law of thermodynamics or random entropy, to give it its other name.

Quantum theory predicts that atoms will be in random places. A few that make up a person have a very low probability of being on the other side of the wall. This probability is normally so low that is does not really occur in the real world but since the increase of randomness…

Also is you look at a mass of plutonium for example. Its common allotrope, Pu-239 has a half life of 24,100 years. This is known and predictable but there is a problem. If you look at one molecule of plutonium, there is no way of knowing when it will decay, it can be in the next couple of seconds or in many thousand of years time. It is identical to all the other plutonium  molecules but they will decay at a different time. The timing of this decay is totally random, as predicted by quantum theory. The problem is now, because of the increase in randomness, this half life will have decreased by an unknown amount and so all nuclear reactors will have to be shut down until they have been redesigned and rebuilt.

‘Why has the lottery gone very strange?’

‘It is because of the strange effect called the common occurrence of unlikely effects. The odds of one ticket winning the lottery is 14 million to one so it is very unlikely that one person with one ticket will win it. But, the big prize is won by someone almost every week. The increase in randomness has to be shared with the lottery which now has more of it and the odds against winning can no longer be calculated and they change every week.

Don’t get me started on the problems with traffic lights, bath water and, and.’

‘What is the answer then Dave?’

‘Leave the European Union and go back to old fashioned time with 24 hours in a day.’

‘How much time to we have? Tell me in old money please.’

‘It is now very late in the day and we have no time to lose. I’d say we are now at the eleventh hour.’

‘Thank you Dave. I’ll notify the Prime Minister, I am sure he will be very pleased to hear that. I’ll also put it in the report of the Smudge enquiry.

W B - 10 The farm office party

The Farm Office Party     Prompt - humour 

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 younger ones were dancing in the clear area in the middle. It was quite difficulty 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 negotiated 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 eyesight 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 Humphries 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. 

WB-9. Woman on a bench.

W B - 9     Woman on a bench - Person, Place, When 

There was still a chill in her tiny flat at this time of the morning. She had resolutely turned off the heating at the first sign of spring. Hetty liked to think of herself as a climate change warrior but in reality the switch-off was driven by her need to save money. A large part of her pension had recently gone on the costs of the wooden bench and its concrete foundations.

It was all a bit of a rush and she took less time than she normally did to get ready to go out. She didn’t want to be late for her long planned date with Howard on this special day. 

She stood in the narrow hallway of her cramped, ground floor, flat and checked her appearance in the full length mirror screwed to the wall. She didn’t like the look of her trousers but knew she would like it even less if her legs were on show. Howard used to laugh with her at what he called her Stilton legs; creamy-white from lack of exposure to the summer sun and with a tracery of blue veins. Hetty had chosen to wear her full length coat today, in spite of the increasingly warm sunshine, because it hid the worn, shabby look of the rest of her clothes. The pair of ex-nurses black shoes, bought from the charity shop in the High Street were practical and comfortable but perhaps not at the height of fashion - she favoured comfort over fashion these days. Her sole concession to the importance of the day was a somewhat frivolous red scarf tied in a bow around her summer straw hat.

‘You don’t scrub up badly for an old-un,’ she said to herself.

‘You’ll always be beautiful to me, Henrietta,’

‘Thank you, Howard,’ she replied.

She grabbed her walking stick - one of Howard’s - from the rack and, with her thumb,  traced the comforting, finger-polished place where the blackthorn had been cut from the hedge. Yes, it was still there since she had felt it last week. She determinedly walked out the door for the last time, not forgetting to lock it behind her.

Hetty walked slowly along the road to the nearby bus stop. She waited there while getting her bus pass out from her bag to clutch defiantly in her hand. She knew that the bus driver would not give her long to get on the bus and present the card before they started muttering about ‘slow old people’, as if they would not be old themselves one day. Hetty herself wasn’t that fond of being old and slow but she didn’t feel she had much choice in the matter. 

The number 28 turned up and she hurried to swipe her diamond card through the reader after asking for ‘Queen Elizabeth Park please.’ She just had time to get to her seat before the bus lurched into movement, making it difficult for her to put her pass safely back in her bag.

The trip wasn’t long. She kept an eye on the stops, ready to press the ‘ting’ button early enough for the driver to stop and, hopefully give her time to get to the door and step off before the muttering started. Luckily the driver was a young woman who even offered to help her if necessary - almost unheard of. Hetty would have enjoyed a chat with a friendly face but she knew the driver had a schedule to keep so she hurried off the bus.

The park looked beautiful in the morning, early summer, sunshine. The grass had been cut and had not yet turned brown from it’s fresh, spring green. They had had many family picnics there over the years. The beds were full of flowering annuals and even the birds sounded cheerful. The sparrows she thought of as the Tescos of the bird world while the dignified blackbirds were the Waitroses with their darting runs between stabbing the grass for a worm, just like the obsequious shop assistants darting out to help ‘Madam’ select some overly expensive and exotically named jar. The starlings were the Aldis of the bird world of course. She walked slowly along the pavement on her three legs, favouring her weak left leg, supporting some of her weight on the stick. She didn’t try to hurry. She stopped to look across the road at the elegant three story house that overlooked the park. 

She let herself into her favourite world through the black-painted wrought iron gate which squealed as it swung open on the rusty hinges. Once inside, she walked along the path, past the benches, saying hello to each of the people mentioned on the memorial brass plaques.

‘Hello Peter and Barbara, good morning Sydney, how are you today, hi David, Sheila, how are the grand children? She had known them all when they were alive and lived in that row of houses with their curtained windows looking down on the park. Yes, she had known them all, and their children and their grandchildren. Then they got old and died; their houses sold by their children to strangers. Now she was the only one left and even she didn’t live in that too-big, too-expensive, house any more.

Hetty got to her destination, a new looking seat, bolted to a still-white concrete base in the dappled shade of a sycamore tree. She brushed the warm, smooth trunk of their tree with her free hand. She chose to sit at the right hand end of the bench so that she could turn and see the bright brass plaque whenever she wanted. She laid her stick gently on the newly varnished wood, she liked that smell.

‘I said I would be here today, didn’t I Howard? Can you believe it, our seventieth wedding anniversary. I’ve know you for seventy four years. It has gone very quickly.

‘Happy anniversary, Hetty.’

‘Thank you Howard and to you too.’

She turned awkwardly to her left and traced the engraved words on the plaque with a wrinkled, shaking finger.

Howard Green 1928  -  2015

There was room on the brass for her name to be engraved under Howard’s. She had always been good at planning ahead.

The gentle breeze rattled the big leaves on their sycamore tree above them as a zephyr passed through the park.

‘I’m sorry I had to do it but, the cost of keeping you in that home was outrageous. I had to sell our house, of course, to pay the bills. Towards the end you didn’t seem to know me, or yourself, so I thought it was the best thing to do. It was very easy with one of those big pillows. Everyone was so sympathetic and you seem to be happier here. I insisted on scattering your ashes here under our tree on my own - just the two of us as, always.’

‘Don’t worry, Hetty, it will always be our secret and I am happier here under the tree, with the sunshine and the birds. You did the right thing for both of us. 

It is a lovely day today, why don’t you come and join me?’

‘We led a good life, didn’t we Howard?’

‘Yes, I think we did, Hetty.’

‘Then I think I will, Howard, I’m feeling old and tired now. I’ll just have a doze here in the sun and then perhaps…’

WB - 8. A calamity with modern day technology

The sun was high in the sky and the birds were cheeping happily in the trees lining Lavender Boulevard. It was one of those streets in the outer reaches of London that thought it was deep in the country, purely by having the pollution resistant London plane trees spaced out at 35 yard intervals along the pavement. It was high summer so the trees were in full leaf - too early to think of dropping to create the annual slippery, sticky, wet mess that everyone hated. Except, of course, the younger school children who revelled in  kicking around the dry leaves before the inevitable rain.

Charlotte was happy. She was pootling along at 25 mph in her new Ford Fiasco. Julian, her nephew, had spent all weekend showing how to cope with the new fangled equipment that was built-in as standard. She had never met most of the gadgets before as her trusty Hillman had lasted twenty three years before expiry. It hadn't even had power steering so Charlotte had remarkable upper body strength for a lady of her advancing years. One of the things that Julian had told her about and then demonstrated was the automatic navigation, driving and parking system.  She thought she would try it out on her own this morning, so she parked the car, manually. She looked up the post code of the Post Office on the car’s built-in computer - yes, she was computer literate - but in the same way that a giraffe is good at riding a bike. She carefully entered the resulting code into the touch screen, told it to go to that area, find a parking space and …er, park.

Charlie sat back in her seat and tried to relax while her car digested the post code information, sorted through 11,325 possible routes, in 23.5 milliseconds, to get there and  set off on what seemed the best one. She didn’t believe that the route they were following was the best one but gritted her teeth and kept her straying fingers from touching the controls. In spite of her determination to give this technology free rein, she had to shut her eyes, put her fingers in her ears and quietly sing, ‘la, la - la la ‘ to herself to shut out the unfamiliar sights, sounds and smells that were briefly projected through the side windows.

The car slowed and came to a gentle halt, ‘We have reached your destination. Shall I park us now?’ said the car in a voice that sounded like a patronising doctor using the royal ‘we’. Charlotte tapped the ‘accept’ button on the touch screen. The car reversed slowly into a space that she would have found impossible to negotiate. She thought she detected a note of pride in the car’s voice as it grandly announced, ‘I have now parked us, how long a stay would you like me to pay for?’ She tapped the ‘2 hour’ button. The car quickly accessed the London parking control centre via the Internet, negotiated a frequent user discount and paid using the debit card data stored in it’s… somewhere, printed out a two hour parking permit and commanded Charlie to place it where is would be visible from outside the car. The doors unlocked and the car said, ‘ you are now free to disembark the vehicle.’ 

It took Charlotte a few seconds to realise that it meant she could now leave the car. She got out, looked around and saw that she was just outside the Post Office with the car neatly tucked in between two other cars, close to the kerb with only a few inches, front and back, free to the next cars in the busy street. She was impressed although she tried not to be and couldn’t resist saying, ‘thank you’ to the car as she opened the door and stepped out. The car, of course, replied , ‘you’re welcome.’ The software had been written in American. She closed the door and the locks snapped shut.

Her chores in the Post Office took only a few minutes so she spent some time wandering along the High Street, looking at all the ‘bargains’ in the windows. She knew they were bargains because most of them said so, in addition to the deep discounts of up to 85%. ‘If they could afford to sell something at an 85% discount it must mean that there was at least an 85% margin on the original item,’ she calculated. Charlotte resolved to never pay the full asking price for anything again. She would buy her Christmas cards in January, for example when they were discounted by a huge amount - better even the December box offers of,’ buy one and get a second one at the same price.’

Her feet were getting a little sore so she decided it was time to have a sit down and enjoy a nice cup of coffee. A Sunbucks soon appeared in the line of shops so she wandered in to try it and looked up at the coffee menu. Why was coffee on a menu, was’t a coffee a coffee any longer?

‘Name?’ asked the barrister behind the counter in a Latvian accent, scratching his wig. 

‘Err… Charlie’, said Charlotte trying to sound hip and ‘down there’, like a gangsta. It didn’t work as the barrista said, ‘thank you madam, what recipe would you like, as he scrawled ‘Charlie’ on the side of a paper cup. 

‘Milk, water and coffee please,’ she said, a little flustered by all the decisions she had to make. The Latvian flipped his ponytail in annoyance and indicated the ‘menu’ on the wall above his head. She gave in and asked for a petite, ginger, skinny, decaff, latte, macchiato with an extra shot. The Latvian gangster repeated it back to her in an incomprehensible gabble and asked for £5.73. Charlie gasped, 

‘I can get fish and chips for less than that.’ 

‘Not in here, you can’t,’ laughed her new found friend, thrusting out a hand to snatch the shiny new £10 note from her fingers. He apologised that the contactless pay system wasn’t working yet as it had only just been installed. She had no idea what he was talking about. 

He showed no signs of getting her coffee so she asked him where it was - perhaps G4S were coming to escort such a valuable item to her table? No, she had to go down to the end of the counter and humbly stand in line for her masterpiece to be prepared to her ‘recipe.’ A young girl from the Philippines called out ‘Charlie’ twice before she realised it was for her. She was handed a paper bucket of coffee with firm instructions to, ‘enjoy.’

After she collected sugar and a wooden stirring stick, not even a spoon after paying that price, she sat at a window table to do some serious people watching while she  tried to enjoy her coffee as instructed. It was not very nice, not at all like the Nescafe Gold Blend she was used to. She dreamed back to the Italian coffee bars of her youth where you could sit for hours sipping a ‘phroffy coffee’ in a tall glass tumbler, held in a EPNS holder, listening to the juke box in the corner while the Gaggia coffee machine hissed and gurgled omnipotently on the counter.

There was a beep from her smart phone. Looking at the screen she realised that it was a text from her car to say that there was only 15 minuted remaining on her parking permit. She slurped the rest of the foul - tasting sludge from her cup and then walked quickly back to the car. As she neared the car, the locks automatically opened and she was able to open the door. After she was in, comfortable and ready to go, she put her home post code in the touch screen and pressed ‘go’. The car didn’t move. She pressed the ‘help’ button, whereupon the voice told here that there was not enough room for the car to manoeuvre out into the road - she was trapped. Charlie got out of the car again to investigate. There was a white van parked behind her, only about three inches between the two bumpers. 

‘How inconsiderate,’ she thought. ‘All this clever technology and it all gets beaten by a white van man.’ She walked to the front of the van and saw that the driver had his feet up on the dashboard, a sausage roll in his hand and was reading the guardian - well page 3 anyway. Charlie knocked on the window and mimed for him to roll it down. 

‘Could you move back a bit and give me room to get out please?’

‘No, it’s my lunch hour,’ said the young man,’I’ll be finished in about ten minutes and then I’ve got to go to a urgent callout so I’ll be moving off then anyway.’

‘OK,’ said Charlie politely, signalling that he could now wind his window up. She walked toward the back of the van and found a gap of about six feet to the next car that was a new blue åçFord. A plan was coming together in her head as she walked back and got into her own car.

‘Hello car,’ she said

‘’My name is Horatio,’ said the car

‘Sorry, Horatio, I wonder if you could help me with a problem?’

‘I’ll try, of course.

‘Can you talk to another new Ford in this area?’

‘Yes, I am in contact with all new Fords within ten miles.’

‘Could you please ask the nice blue car behind the white van if he could move forward and get as close as possible to the back of the white van.’

‘Yes, but that will mean that the white van won’t be able to…oh I see, consider it done. 

‘Thank you, Horatio, you can go to sleep now while I go to those old fashioned tea rooms across the road and try to get a decent, cheap cup of coffee. I’ll watch the fun from the window.’

‘OK, Charlotte.’

WB - 7. Old book

It wasn’t until my children started asking questions about our family and where we came from that I realised how little I knew about our family history. I said it might take a couple of weeks to sort it out. It has now been nearly twenty years and there are still more questions than answers remaining. One thing that has changed over this time is that there is much more information on line but most of it cannot be relied upon except for pointing you in a direction. For confirmation, it is always advisable to go back to the original sources. This means visits to libraries and record offices and browsing through old books, written sometimes in english, sometimes in Old English and other times, more rarely, in Latin.

My grandfather had died in 1934, before I was born and my father was now no longer with us so I knew very little about the Kefford side of the family. There was no one to ask so I started looking through the microfiche records of Kefford births, marriages and deaths ( BMDs ) from the start of civil registration in 1838 to the present day. Being a methodical sort of bloke, I wrote down all the Keffords I found. There were quite a lot so I put them all into a spreadsheet. I then found I could ‘reconstruct’ families by sorting the spreadsheet for different data such as birth dates, names or places. Once I had found one of ‘my’ Keffords, I sent off for their birth certificate. This gave me information on the previous generation.

I also used the censuses to find out where they were living and their occupations. By these means I slowly traced the Keffords of my family back through Brighton, Brentford to Bassingbourn in Cambridgeshire where they were wheelwrights and blacksmiths.

I had also accumulated many other Keffords who were not related to me, as far as I knew so I started putting their families together and this took me further afield, to Australia in six cases. I found contacts in England, Australia, America and Hawaii so there was a lot of letter writing and later, e mail.

I had stopped research on my own family when I reached two William Keffords who were born in the same village in the same quarter of the same year as I was unable to differentiate between them and so could not establish which was ‘mine.’

By this time, I had set a ‘Kefford One Name Study’ and registered it with The Guild of One Name Studies ( GoONS !).

I followed many trails and came across a document in the Cambridge record office that mentioned Keffords and was dated 5th. Eliz. It was on parchment, with a seal and in latin. I had to find out what it said! I found out that Queen Elizabeth was crowned on 7 September 1558 so ‘5th. Eliz. referred to the fifth year of her reign so was 1563.

I managed to find a latin scholar who would translate this document for me. It was a land sale document. John Kefforde, yeoman, bought ‘One close of pasture called The Stewe Pyghtell, including one pond in the Parish of Barley  from James Porter, labourer.’  in Hertfordshire for forty six shillings and eight pence and three bushels of wheat. There is a lot more, of course, in the document and I had to look up some latin that had been translated into Old English to make sense of it all.

I then found John Norden’s survey of England which had been reprinted and the map of Barley showed the land mentioned on it with the name Kefford clearly shown.

Further research showed that there were several Keffords in Barley around that time and some were wheelwrights so they may have been related to ‘my’ Keffords.

As a footnote to this story, the land can still be traced in the village and there is a house built on this land which is called ‘Keffords.’

Now, when I look at my family tree, I agree with Isaac Newton. I feel I am standing on the shoulders of giants. If anyone of my ancestors had not been there, I would not exist so I feel gratitude towards them, not only for their genes but just for their existence.

The same also applies to the future of course, each generation means a doubling of  the number of ancestors required to support the ever growing pyramid.

*****

WB - 6. Chosen words. “Gate, purple, saucepan, phobia and ice.”

She urged Phobia forward towards the gate. He jumped and soared over it with ease, Mozart’s musical joke in her ears. They landed with a momentary slide on a patch of ice. A steward saw the slip and hurried over with a saucepan of hot water to melt away the hazard.

Please excuse the purple prose.

WB - 5. Short story based on a photo

  challenge.wordbohemia.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/week-5-prompt.jpg

The ice cave

Wisps of steam rose gently into the frigid air from between the water worn boulders in the melt water stream bed. Icy fingers hung from the roof, collecting the steam, condensing it, turning it into stalagmite droplets that sparkled in the glittering light of the head torches of the two geologists who were slipping over the boulders.

There was an eery stillness but the vaulted ice above creaked and banged as the stresses in the ice cap moved and eased under the weight of ice. It was snowing hard outside so the weight was changing, increasing, adding to the stresses on the corbal roof of the cave as it supported the immense weight above it. The roof was being weakened by the steam from the flank of Grímsvötn below, melting the arch above.

‘I thing Grímsvötn is waking up,’ said Siggi.

‘The last eruption was in 2004 so another is due this year and by the look of the steam from the fumeroles, it could be sooner, rather than later,’ agreed Arne.

They picked their way carefully through the treacherous stream bed while keeping a careful watch on the roof of the cave. A vast pile of smashed ice nearly blocked their way. It had clearly recently crashed down from the roof. They picked their way around the pile and pushed the route out to where the cave narrowed into tunnel, the roof and side closing in claustrophobically. The noise increased as they climbed further, the melt water crashing and leaping in the stream bed. The creaking and groaning from the roof of the tunnel increased in intensity. The boulders in the stream bed crashed together as they imbricated. There was also the feeling of dread, an underlying sub sonic hum. It felt like Grímsvötn was stretching and intending her muscles, ready to burst a stream of molten lava from the mountain, ready to tackle the melting of the ice cap to start a Jökulhlaup on its way across the Sandur outwash plains to the sea. ‘The land of fire and ice indeed!’

As Arne and Siggi wriggled their way up the tunnel, deeper into the ice, the water flow increased, scouring out the ice to the sides of the tunnel into phantasmagorical shapes, designed by the laws of physics and rheology, crafted by the non-Newtonian Reynolds flow of the water.

Ahead they could just see the molten lava erupting silently from one of the vents ion the floor of the cave directly into the cold rushing water. This instantly cooled the surface of the lava so forming the pillow lavas that can be seen over much of Iceland. SIG and Arne were enthralled by the sight which is probably why they lingered too long in the danger area and were overcome by the sulphurous gasses that were being emitted from the vents as the volcano started to erupt. The temperature in the tunnel started to rise very quickly, melting the base of the ice roof.

The roof started a progressive collapse. Massive volumes of ice quickly changed to liquid phase and added to the considerable flow in the stream, quickly converting it to a river and then shortly to a raging torrent that further undermined the ice resulting in further progressive collapses.

There was now a full Jökulhlaup  in operation. It swept all before it as its flow volume reached that of the Amazon. The flow of course carried out the bodies of the two geologists. They were later found close to the sea, where they had been carried far out on the sandur. Their bodies were not recovered because the A1 road had been swept away and crossing the sandur was impossible in any sort of vehicle.

The eruption lasted only two days but in that time, many cubic kilometres of ice had been melted above Grímsvötn’s crater resulting in a deep depression in the surface of the ice cap, surrounded by many crevasses.

It took a week after the Jökulhlaup flow calmed down to reinstate enough of the road to allow traffic through.

It snowed regularly over the next few weeks, as if nature was covering up her gaping black wound on the ice cap.