Technology

The cave was warm and dry, but outside it was very different. The rain came down in gert big lumps and thunder echoed around the mountains. As the storm grew closer, lightning became more frequent and zagged to the earth, striking several trees on its way. Some of the trees succumbed to the onslaught and breathed their last as they crashed down onto the floor of the forest and lay there, gently barking. They wondered what they had done to deserve such destruction, not realising that causality was not an issue. The thunder faded as the storm moved away and night descended, dark and calm.

                The morning dawned bright and freshly washed. A pallid, liquid sun slowly burnt off the mists generated from the saturated ground, now clinging to the trees that had been spared by the storm that was a poorly-remembered distant nightmare.

                Ugg stretched in the morning dampness to get the knots out of his ancient joints, he was seventeen, looked over at his elder brother Ogg, who had not yet stirred. Ugg and Ogg were twins. This was an unusual event when most births resulted in a death before two years and twins were considered to be bad luck because there were usually two deaths close together. They had survived the births, a few minutes apart, the usual childhood diseases and accidents, grown up together and were now approaching old age. Their mother was already dead, having reached the ripe old age of thirty two. Their father was now thirty five and clearly had little more time to live. He was the chief of the tribe so Ugg and Ogg had come to the high mountain to find slabs of rock that would be used to build his cist tomb where he would be buried with what the archaeologists far in the future would call grave goods. His favourite club, some food to sustain him in the afterlife and his collection of bowls.

                Many trees had fallen into the combe that they had planned to use as an easy route back to the village so their choices were to heave the slabs over the tree trunks or move all of the trees. They decided to try to lift the first slab over a tree to see if it was possible. It was a struggle to get it up on the tree but then it stared to roll, taking the slab with it. When all the motion stopped they saw that the rock slab had moved twice as far as the tree – with little effort. They decide to try it again with the next tree. It worked again except that, this time it stopped because one of the tree branches stuck in the ground.

                The two brothers looked at each other with a growing understanding in their eyes. Without talking, they each took their flint axes and started hacking the branches off the next tree down the combe. They then pulled the slab onto it and rolled it down to the next tree. They repeated this until they got down to the grazing grassland near the village. They then got the idea of putting the tree trunk that they had left behind in front of the one they were using so that the slab just carried in rolling. They rushed into the village and grabbed a couple of young boys to help them. They explained what they were doing and soon had the five slabs for the cist down to the village from the mountain high above.

                They explained all of this and how they had done it to the village elders who grumbled and said that no good would come of this new technology and, anyway, it would never catch on – they hadn’t thought of it.. The young ones were very enthusiastic, however, and insisted that Ugg and Ogg show them how it was done.

                Mugg watched all this while he thought about the possibilities and how this technology could be developed.  Why did you need a complete tree trunk, he mused, why not cut the tree into a roller that was only as long as the slab was wide so it would be easier to navigate down the combe.

                Why not use several rollers to avoid having to keep stopping because you had run out of tree and why not… Mugg had just invented the first thought experiment.

                The problem with this, of course, was that there was no way of steering and the rollers often jammed on small rocks in the way. They soon found that fat trees worked better than thin trees so they cut down the biggest tree near the village. They then cut discs from it which they fixed to each end of the roller. Then Mogg suggested that they cut holes in the discs and fitted them over the roller ends. This allowed them to fix the roller and fix branches lengthways. They had built a cart!

                The older generation watched all this with some bemusement. They kept a wary eye on the gods in case this wasn’t allowed and they would be smitten. No smiting happened but less people were needed to do more work so more crops were grown and the village flourished in spite of the old ones shaking their heads and predicting that no good would come of it.

                Ugg and Ogg’s father lived to the magnificent old age of thirty seven and was dully buried in the stone cist. His was the first funeral ceremony in the history of the Earth where the body was taken to the grave on a cart.

                Mogg and Mugg now had some spare time so they concentrated on developing this new technology. They found that smearing pig fat around the centre of the discs reduced the wear on the rollers so both the discs and rollers lasted longer. They then tried tying a bullock to the front of the cart to pull it along. Mogg and Mugg were the first technicians and showed that greater productivity in the fields freed up others to become specialists and showed the way forward for the human race. It was a long time before they had the idea of allowing the front discs to go in different directions to the rear ones and so make a fully steerable cart.

                The old ones, those over about twenty, couldn’t adapt to these new ideas so they carried on working in the old way. Their day passed by and the new technology was developed through the generations at an increasing rate as the young ones accepted the new technology as normal and the older generations passed on.

                This was to be the way of the world.

*****

It finally wheezed to a full stop, Southbound on the M6, a mile short of Hilton Park Services. Isla was anxious. ‘Do you think I should call the AA?’

                ‘Why not, we have been paying them for years. Let’s see what they can do.’ Said Ted.

Isla did so and reported that rescue would be there in under thirty minutes. They got out and arranged themselves on the grassy bank just behind the crash barrier. Ted got the thermos out of the car so they could enjoy a cup of coffee, while they waited.

                A yellow van with a light rack flashing on top drew to a halt just in front of Flossy and a young man with a well-developed belly heaved himself down from the cab.

                ‘Stay behind the barrier please sir,’ he said as Ted struggled to get over the barrier to talk to him. ‘You cannot be serious, are you really still driving a Morris Minor estate with wood on the back? I haven’t seen one of these for years.’

                ‘She has given us very good service for many years and has been very reliable,’ protested Isla. ‘We call her Flossy.’

                The AA man snorted. ‘I’ll see if I can winch her up on the back and then I’ll take you two and, err - Flossy - to your home where I’ll drop you off. I can’t do any repairs on Flossy as we don’t carry tools now, just this wrist computer. If you climb up and make yourselves comfortable in the back of the wagon, I’ll get Flossy winched up.’

                Ted and Isla couldn’t manage to climb up until Andy showed them the small fold-down step on the side of the van. Ted wanted to sit up the front, just like his inner child told him but Andy told him it wasn’t allowed, EU safety rules.

                Flossy was safely tied down and they set off on the drive South to Dursley where Isla and Ted had lived for over thirty years.

                ‘Do you think Flossy is repairable?’ asked Ted.

                ‘It will cost you about twice that of a new car. I suggest you go and see what is available. You will save money overall as the costs to run a new one are much less than the old fashioned petrol driven things like Flossy. You will probably find that it, er she, will not be allowed on the roads after next year anyway – EU rules on pollution etc.’ explained Andy as he battled with the traffic through the Wednesbury section of the M6.’

                They eventually arrived home and Andy off loaded Flossy onto their driveway.

                ‘Good luck with your new car,’ said Andy, as he shook hands with both of them after getting them to sign his pick up paperwork. He drove off in his nearly noiseless van, with a cheerful wave.

*

‘Poor Flossy,’ said Isla as they sat on the bus that would take them to the garage that had always looked after their faithful Morris, ‘I feel quite guilty having her replaced.’

                ‘Don’t get upset, now, it is just a car,’ said the more pragmatic Ted.

They got off the bus and walked around the corner to the garage. It was gone. A sign over the padlocked gate said, Closed due to EU regulations.

‘I knew a lot of garages had closed but I thought old Bert would carry on forever,’ moaned Ted.

‘Just like Flossy, I suppose,’ mused Isla,’ do you think it will apply to us soon? Put down because of EU regulations?’

‘No, we’ll be ok for a couple of years yet. Let’s go to those new car showrooms down on the Gloucester Road.’

*

They were ushered in by a young man with red braces, gleaming, slicked down hair and a suit that was different to anything that Ted would ever wear.

                ‘How may I help you, Sir and Madam?’ as if he was talking to a couple of dimwits.

Ted did think of playing up to him by asking him to repeat everything and calling him ‘young man’ but he thought the time wasn’t right. He explained their situation and ended up asking how much Flossy would be worth as a part exchange.

                ‘We don’t take the old petrol or diesel clunkers,’ he said unkindly, we only take ten year old nuclear models under EU rules.’

                ‘You had better explain,’ said Ted grimly. This was worse than he had imagined.

The salesman started with his ‘old people’ spiel.

                ‘As the oil started running out and a general world – wide agreement was reached on climate change in 2015, it was agreed that all cars, vans and lorries built after 2018 would be powered by nuclear. The petrol and diesel cars, vans and lorries would be phased out. All engines would be sealed, use the lithium fission process and be built by EADS as, obviously, the airline industry was in steep decline because of the huge rise in government taxes across the world to encourage people to use other, less polluting forms of transport. Security was also an issue as it didn’t seem a good idea to allow terrorists to buy up old cars and strip them down for their nuclear fuel to make a dirty bomb. The engine seal is alarmed with bluetooth link to a hotspot to the internet and thence on to special branch with GPS so the security breach can be shut down very quickly.

                All new cars can be driven in driver or driverless mode. The system is based on GPS which can either direct you to your destination or take you there, as you wish. ‘Some older people cannot cope with driverless cars,’ said the young man with a gleam in his eye.

                ‘I was driving and fixing cars while you were still in nappies,’ said Ted who was getting a little fed up with being lectured.

                ‘Well, yes but the fact is there is no maintenance required for the ten year life of the vehicle – everything is designed to last for ten years, even the tyres etc. At the end of the ten years or if you decide not to have a car any longer, it must be returned to an approved dealer and then sent to EADS for a complete refurbishment and refuelling. The fuel pellets are reprocessed in a secure facility in Broughton – the old aircraft factory in fact.

                The cars all have a common chassis, engine etc. the only differentiation is in the body which is put on top. There are obviously no crashes because of the navigation and distance sensors.

                ‘But with no servicing, no fuel, and no insurance, what has happened to all those jobs?’ asked Isla.

                ‘The people are all busy working on the organic farms, bee keeping or following their creative instincts funded by the government on minimum wages.’ Said Red Braces. ‘If the government can find the money to support bankers, why can’t it do it for ordinary people?

                Of course you will have to have a left hand drive because the UK will change over to driving on the left next year – an EU directive. But to make it easier for old people we will be doing it over two consecutive weekends, commercial vehicles on the first weekend and cars on the following one.

There was a silence, ‘but doesn’t that mean…?’ asked Isla hesitantly.

                ‘Just a joke,’ grinned Braces. ‘I think that is about it, do you want a car?’

                ‘How much are they?’ asked Ted

                ‘Totally free under the EU job creation directive.’

                ‘It all seems too good to be true, said Ted.

                ‘That’s because you are old,’ said the odious young man, ‘the world is changing and you old ones are getting left behind.’

Ted stood up, looked the young man in the eye and asked, have you ever done any boxing?’

                ‘No, of course not, it’s too barbaric.’

                ‘Well I have’, said Ted, looking down at the young man spread-eagled on the floor.’ Come on Isla. Let’s go home and I’ll sort Flossie out, I am probably the only guy left in Dursley who can do it, even if I haven’t got any red braces. When we can’t keep Flossy going any longer we we’ll walk and cycle everywhere. Until then, we’ll call her a vintage classic.’

                ‘Good bye young man, I should get a doctor to look at that bruise. Do you plan to tell your mates that you got it from an old man?’

Homelessness

‘Sit down Davy, I think it is time I told you The Story,’ said Dad as I walked across the square on my way home from school, leaving the shower there behind me.

                ‘What do you mean Dad, what story?’

                ‘You have probably heard rumours and gossip about it from your mates, now I want to confirm to you The Story, just like my Dad did to me when I was your age, and his Dad before that’

                ‘Err, ok then Dad. Do you want to talk about it here, in the centre of Nottingham?’

                ‘Why not, this is now our home.

                ‘OK, Dad.’

                ‘Listen well, Son.’

*****

‘Many, Many years ago, when time was still young, there was The Void. It was dark, cold and still. The Void existed for many years, epochs and eons until one day, a puff of vapour appeared. Out of that vapour came a breath. This breath condensed in the dark and still upon the cold. It stayed there in the dark, frosty and crystalline because of the cold. There was not a trace of Brownian motion. Nothing happened for many more long eons. Then a moon burst into existence. It reflected a ghostly dim light from the far distant Sun but it was enough to see the crystals sparkling in the greenish light. It had been postulated by scholars that the moon was made of green cheese. There was enough light to see that this was indeed the Garden of Edam. It was called the Planet of Troo.

                We were all happy there. It was a clearly structured society. Because it was so cold, everyone knew their place within the crystal lattice. Family bonds were short and symmetrical. Young children were frightened into submission by their parents of terrible warnings about what would happen if they were banished to the Void. There was no liquid water as Planet Troo was too far away from the Sun to be in the goldilocks zone. After many happy years of unchanging contentment, some scholars warned that a rogue planet was approaching – it would not impact Troo but the new planet’s gravity would have a disturbing effect and could well break up Troo. This is what happened and Troo was broken into unknowable numbers of fragments of ice, known forever after as the Oort Cloud.

                Someone had to be blamed. A hunt for scapegoats took place. A group of young people were found and blamed because they had been practicing the sin of sublimation. The guilty ones were rounded up and sentenced to be banished to the Void. Banished to the terrifying cold, black velvet, unknown, of the Void. A huge lump of dirty ice was given to them with a brief, ‘Good Luck,’ then they were sent upon their way with everyone thinking that they would never survive the Void because we all believed the stories we had been told as children.

                The Oort Cloud is in the far reaches of the solar system but the Sun’s gravity still has a very small but insistent pull. The chunk of ice was eventually captured by the Sun’s gravity and began to describe a very long elliptical orbit around it with the Oort Cloud at aphelion. Kepler’s laws were unknown then so all thought the orbit would be circular and so would easily miss the Earth at Perihelion.  This would mean that the comet, because so it was named, would forever orbit the sun with only slight perturbations during an alignment of the planets. The comet warmed up as it approached the Sun and started releasing a tail of particles away from it. It could still be seen from the Oort Cloud but appeared to be wavering, because of the gravity perturbations, as it orbited the sun, hence the fable of The Wandering Dew.

                As they closed upon the Earth, it became clear that they were a Near Earth Comet and there was a high probability that they would impact the Earth as the orbit was altered by the closeness of the planet. They got closer and closer until they crashed into the Earth. The kinetic energy was instantly turned into heat, which melted the ice so a great quantity of water was delivered to the earth – along with the organic molecules that had dirtied the ice. This has always been known as The First Splash.’ Davey and his Dad then spat upon the ground to recall this event and as a mark of respect for this gift of creation.

                ‘Over the following geological ages in the Paleoproterozoic, more comets crashed into the Earth with their cargoes of organic molecules and so the oceans were formed and beasts grew within them, starting with simple algae formed from the molecules carried by the comets. All the people on the comets were, of course, incinerated on impact.’

                ‘So that is The Story, young Davy. Now you must pass it on to your children.’

                ‘How will I know when to tell them, Dad?’

                ‘You will know when the time is right.’

                ‘OK, Dad,’ said Davy as I prepared to skip off home.

                ‘Wait, said Dad, ‘I must explain why we are always moving. It is because we feel we do not belong, we are homeless, we are always searching for a way back to the Garden of Edam. I will now tell you a story that highlights this, here on Earth.’

*****

‘Almost all the water on the Earth is in the oceans. A warm atmosphere above it evaporates the water from the sea and forms clouds above it. Coriolis forces start to spin the clouds and sometimes a tropical storm or hurricane is formed. This blown across the land where it is raised by the mountains and cooled. The clouds cannot hold as much water at this lower temperature so a rainstorm starts to fall on the seaward side of the mountains. Rivulets start to form on the high ground and they form mountain torrents as they merge. They eventually reach the plains where they meet up to form huge, meandering rivers on their way to the sea. They carry sediment from the erosion in the mountains and form new land on the edges of the rivers before they reach the sea and dump the remaining silt, forming a delta. This is called the water cycle.

It rains here in Nottingham, often. The rain runs down along the gutters and forms puddles. The puddles form in dents and cracks in the ground. Do you not think it is strange and wonderful that the shape of the cracks and dents exactly fits the puddle where we are now talking? Is this not the absolute proof of intelligent design?

We fit in and belong here. This is our real home, Davy.  We are homeless no longer. 

The desecration of Dartmoor

I walk on Dartmoor often, in all weathers and in different areas.  I have done this for many years but I always question the presence of sheep. They seem like an infestation. They leave their droppings everywhere making the whole area unpleasant, impossible to have a picnic on the ground and in the summer it stinks.  I am sure they also reduce the numbers of skylarks by disturbing their ground nests. Skylarks are one of the glories of summer on Dartmoor.

                Until recently, I have assumed we all have to put up with the sheep because they are ‘natural’, they provide a living for the upland sheep farmers, we need the meat and their grazing keeps Dartmoor as it is ‘meant to be’. This all changed recently for me – especially since I started to have the scientific attitude of ’trust no one’  ( The motto of the Royal Society ) until you have seen and proven it to yourself. This obviously doesn’t apply to, for example, to the existence of the Higgs Boson, I have to take that on trust as I do not have an LHD in my garage and so have to believe what the majority of scientists say but I can look at Dartmoor and begin to question the presence of the sheep. I am now very distrustful of everything that people say – even scientists. I shamelessly use Richard Dawkins aphorism and say, ‘Show me the evidence’.

                I tend to divide my trips to Dartmoor into expeditions to look for and examine a particular geological exposure or mineral outcrop. This has recently included Aplite veins near Okehampton and Quartz Porphyritic dykes and sills ( Elvans ) in the granite tors near Belstone. One day I decided to look for tin mines and Cassiterite ore in the Eylesbarrow area, taking in a look at the stone rows on Higher Hartor Tor on the way. ( Found some beautiful 25cm Feldspar crystals in this area ) I wandered around the old tin workings, picking up samples of ore. I found several mine shafts and their partly filled in remains were fenced off, thus preventing human accidents and, in the process, preventing sheep from grazing the slopes down into the shafts.  These slopes were green and verdant with long, lush grass and luxuriant blueberry bushes. This was unlike the devastated vegetation I had seen over the years on many other parts of the moor. All that was left there was the vegetation that the sheep had rejected. It could also be that, in addition to the exclusion of sheep, the plants were sheltered in a micro climate but I still think, and it would be easy to prove by fencing off an upland, unprotected from the wind, area to see what would happen.

                While I munched on my cheese and pickle sandwiches I wondered what the moor would look like if all the sheep were removed for say ten years? Would trees return? Would there be many more birds and other wild life? Would it be a much moor natural, pleasant place? What would happen to the sheep farmers? Would it cost a lot of money that the nation could ill afford? What would we do about the loss of sheep meat produced.

                What would happen if Dartmoor was turned into a real national park and all sheep and cattle were banned?

                Since that day of questioning I have done quite a lot of research, with the following results:

There would be an increase in volume and diversity of plants, although it would take many years.

 It would save the Country money because of a reduction in hill farming grants – at present averaging £20,000 per farmer although for some landowners like the Duke of Westminster they are in the hundreds of thousands – no cap for these benefit claimants!

There would be an increase in numbers and diversity of birds and wild life.

There would be a reduction in floods downstream because of the growth of deep rooted plants that would store rainwater on the high ground, and reduction in hard pan froming because of the trampling of sheep’s sharp hooves.

Because of the decrease in downstream flooding there would be more fertile land available for productive farming and so there would probably be a net increase in meat produced from the area.

Some of the larger fauna, could be reintroduced from other countries

There would be very few jobs lost, probably an increase in fact, as the sheep farming jobs would be replaced by rangers, fencing work, forestry work, general ecology work and tourist centre work as the Moor becomes a much more attractive place to visit.

It would eventually become a balanced ecosystem although mankind would probably still have to, for example, cull excess deer numbers because of the missing top predator – unless we were bold enough to introduce lions etc..

I don’t have the knowledge or expertise to argue the case so I will leave it to George Monbiot who has written a persuasive article called, ‘Sheepwrecked’

http://www.monbiot.com/2013/05/30/sheepwrecked/

and a book called:

FERAL. Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding.

The Loch Ness Monster

Doctor Henry Lancaster slowed and then drew his VW pop-top into the layby overlooking the loch. It was his first sight of Loch Ness so he was impressed by the beauty of the calm water framed by the mountains on the other shore. He caught himself scanning the water surface for any ripples or other sign of an unexpected presence. He grinned to himself. ‘If it was that easy, there would be uncountable accounts of sightings over the years,’ he told himself.

                Starting the engine of his old, but reliable VW, he set off on the loch-shore road again until he saw a boat pulled up from the Loch with an old man sat on a stool beside it and a sleeping dog on the beach by his side.

                ‘Boat and boatman for hire, please ask.’ Said the sign propped up against the boat.

Henry stopped. ‘Are you free?’ he asked.

                ‘Aye, I’m free, I’ve been waiting for thee

                Myself and the dog are all agog

                To hear why you want a boat

                We’ve been watching since you were a mote

In my eye to see

                Why you want to float, in a boat, on the Loch?’

Henry was a little taken aback by this. He wondered if this old man with his sleeping dog was quite right in the head or was he just a very bad poet. The man and his boat was exactly what he wanted so he thought he would press on and risk getting trapped in a boat with a nutter – at least he would have the dog to talk to, he liked a bit of doggerel.

                ‘I would like to hire you and your boat for a week. I am a palaeontologist from Brecon University. I am carrying out some research into plesiosaurs. I am trying to prove once and for all that there is no monster in Loch Ness and, even if there was something unusual here, it is certainly not a plesiosaur. As you know, it is difficult to prove a negative, but I feel I have to try. Have you always been a boatman?’

                ‘I used to be a shepherd,

but I kept on losing me sheep.

So I taught my dog to count them.

Then all he did was sleep.’

After a long and somewhat difficult conversation because the boatman usually talked in verse, they agreed that the he would take Henry wherever he wanted on the loch for a week. He introduced himself as Hamish McGonagall, one of the Skeltonic poets. He was proud that he was descended from the greatest Skeltonist of them all, William McGonagall.

                ‘The story of the Tay Bridge disaster

                Was documented well by the master

                It may be too long

                And the language so strong.

                But it just makes you read it all faster.’

They decided that they would leave the dog on the shore, having jointly agreed that they would leave a sleeping dog lie. Henry did wonder why a sleepy sheep dog would tell lies but he didn’t ask Hamish for fear of finding out what rhymes with ‘sheep dog.’

            ‘Do you believe in the Loch Ness Monster,’ asked Henry rather bravely after they had been on the water for a couple of hours.

            ‘Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?’ Asked Hamish somewhat Delphically.

                ‘Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’’ asked Henry, trying to get away from metaphysics – it was not his subject, he was a simple old bone man.

                ‘Maybe,’ said Hamish

Henry sat in silence for a while, his brain was starting to hurt.

                ‘Have you seen the monster?’ Henry tried again.

                ‘That depends.’

                ‘What does it depend on?’

               

                ‘I call the monster Beauty

And beauty is in the eye of the beholder

But when you have something in your eye,

ye cannae see anything

So I haven’t seen Beauty but I see beauty all the time.’

‘Right, that’s true’, agreed Henry, who was getting somewhat baffled and frustrated about not getting a straight answer to his questions.

‘Do you think there is a monster in the loch.?’ Henry wasn’t going to give up yet.

‘If I think, ‘yes’, does that create a monster or

If I think ‘no’ it blinks out of existence?

Does the life of the monster depend on me?

Am I responsible for its creation?

Doesn’t bear thinking about.

Too much responsibility.

Henry decided that he would give up for the day and change the question. ‘Do many of the monster hunters you have taken out on the Loch believe that the monster really exists?’

‘I’ve found there are three type of Monster hunters – those who believe in the monster and those who don’t.’

Henry waited for the next line, but none was forthcoming.

‘If there is a monster in the loch, do you think it might be a plesiosaur?’ asked Henry, trying a different tack, even though the wind was light and the boat didn’t have a sail. ( He wanted to have a try at this Skeltonic stuff ).

Somewhat surprisingly, Hamish answered with a logical argument.

                ‘The youngest plesiosaur has been found in Cretaceous strata that is about 65 million years old. That works out at 6.5 million generations if you say that the plesiosaur parents are about ten yours old on average when their offspring are hatched. This is plenty of time for dinosaurs to have evolved into something else.  As the youngest dino fossils have feathers on them, we think they evolved into birds and flown away from Loch Ness. But, if they stayed around here, you would have to look for birds.

Remember that there are two great rules of life:-

                1 – Never tell everything at once.

                Did you see that seagull fly past us just now?’

The school reunion

I went through a spell of using the Friends Reunited website a few years ago and through this, I received an invitation  from Tony Malone to a school reunion he was organising for the year’s cohort of which  I was a member. I vaguely remembered him, it was a long time ago. It struck me as strange that I now knew his first name as, at school we were referred to by the teachers by surname only and we continued this amongst ourselves. I don’t know most of the first names of my peers even now.

                This invitation got me thinking about the teachers and fellow pupils from so long ago that I had not thought of for many years - life before memories. I attended Worthing Technical High School until I left on 4^th August 1962 and joined the Royal Navy on 7^th August, just three days later the same year. This was after a major row as my teachers and parents wanted me to stay on for the usual route of ‘A’ levels and university. I disagreed as I couldn’t wait to leave home and school and get out into the wide world. I had planned on joining the Royal Navy since I was about six. I was obsessed by the sea and read everything I could about it. I could soon name the different styles of bows and sterns and knew the name of every sail on a square rigged ship. I left school with one GCE, Maths, that I had taken a year early. I later got the results of passes in six more, after I had joined up.

                The irony was that, as soon as I joined, instead of going to sea as I had intended, I ended up spending six years doing an Artificer Apprenticeship with only the fifth year at sea in the Persian Gulf – from one classroom to another, the frying pan into the fire.

                This was the new style of vocational technical schools so we did the first three years together and then chose the Artisanship, Arts or Sciences for the last two years up to GCSE. I enjoyed wood and metalwork so wanted to be in the Artisan group but was persuaded to take the Sciences instead. This being 1960, the group consisted only of boys, ‘You can’t have girls doing science’! There were fifteen of us in our group and, while I got to know them very well, it also meant that I lost touch with my friends who had been through primary and secondary education with me. I was very sorry to slowly lose touch with my best friend, Jack, who I lost to the Arts stream as he wanted to be an architect.  He became a very successful architect and started and built up his own practice but, he sadly died in 2009. We kept in touch over the years with Christmas cards and the odd letter but I got to see him in 2006 when he and his wife had a holiday in Bath. They came to see us for a day and it was good to see him after so many years

                There were some real characters in our group, I suppose these days they would have been characterised as mad scientists and geeks – I was the only one who was normal, of course.

                Brooks was undoubtedly teacher’s pet as he soaked up the knowledge without any problem and could effortlessly regurgitate it in exams so inevitably coming top in all exams and tests etc. His favourite subject was maths and he left us all standing. What made it worse was that his parents were rich and so bought him one of those three wheeler bubble cars while he was still at school, it was one of those strange ones with the one passenger sitting behind the driver. It was called a Messerschmidt. The rest of us could only run to second-hand bikes so we were very envious even though we didn’t show it, much.

                The teachers were very strict and all wore their academic gowns every day. Mr Bush took us for chemistry. He was fearsome and insisted on everything being ‘just so’. ‘There is only one way of doing things,’ he used to say. ‘That is my way, which is also the correct way.’  He had pet hates, one was the use of the word ‘amount’. ‘Do you mean mass or volume, boy?’ he thundered. ‘Amount means nothing, it has no units. If you want to describe a quantity to me, it must have units, preferably SI units of grammes or cc. Now, try again.’ By this time the poor student would be a red –faced, stuttering wreck, but the message got home. If you want to do science, you have to be precise. His other bête noir was describing something as a ’chemical’. ‘Everything is a chemical. Everything is made of atoms that are on the Periodic Table, they are all chemicals’.  I still think of this all these years later when people say there are too many chemicals in food. I am very tempted to agree and then say that, à la Bush, ’if you took all the chemicals out, you would have nothing left.’

 In spite of the rigor, I liked Mr Bush and enjoyed chemistry because, even at that age, I could see that he was driven by the enthusiasm for his subject, he just wanted to share the wonder of it all with us. I do laugh when today’s schoolchildren talk about health and safety as none of us had goggles, there was no fume cupboard, even when handling bromine, we used to play with mercury and float coins on it, on wooden trays. At the end of each term, Mr Bush used to play tricks with reagents. This might be pouring sulphuric acid onto sugar and seeing the resulting, writhing black snake or mixing two clear liquids and making a rich dark blue solution and then making the colour disappear with the addition of another clear liquid.  After enjoying all this magic, we of course, had to write the equation of the reaction and then get told off if we got it wrong.

                Hubble was the quiet one who always appeared to be rather stupid and gave wacky, way out answers to the teacher’s questions. On one famous occasion, when asked a fairly simple question and getting it hopelessly wrong, albeit in a funny way, the exasperated teacher asked, ‘How on earth did you get to this school Hubble?’ Hubble answered artlessly, ‘By bicycle, Sir.’ This question and the response was all around the school by lunchtime. Hubble was not stupid at all, he always got good marks in exams.            

                Miss Davis took us for Maths. We did Ordinary, Applied and Additional Maths as three subjects and some days we spent all day on maths. I really struggled with this until we started differential calculus and I could see the beauty of it and it all seemed to make sense. Then we did ballistics and Newton’s equations of motion and I really enjoyed all that as I could see some future applications of that in my secret dream to go to sea with the Navy. She was really the favourite teacher of our group as she seemed to be easy going, but in reality she knew how everyone was doing and managed to get us through the exams with little trouble.

                Monnery was the typical nerd. He just worked and worked and understood everything. He was in great demand to explain the parts that no one else understood. He was friendly, not standoffish, like Brooks, so he was very popular in spite of being the class swot.

                Mr Baxter took us for Physics. He was a geography teacher but as there was a shortage of physics teachers in the school, he would have to do. He was honest with us in saying that he was only a day ahead of us with the learning before teaching us and sometimes we would have to learn together. It all worked though as there was an overlap with some of the maths we were already learning. Sometimes he got stuck and we would have to help him out.

                                Cooper was probably in our group by mistake. He was a big lad and an athlete. He could just about cope with the science and maths but his real joy was to get out on the field during PE and join in some game or other.

Of course we couldn’t just do science and maths, we also had to learn a language. We thought anything that wasn’t science was a bit of a waste of time – we were all rapidly becoming embryo lab rats. I chose French as I thought it would be the easiest. Mr Martens got the unenviable task of trying to teach us French. He was Flemish. He spoke English very well but his teaching method didn’t suit us. We were scientists, we inquired, checked and challenged! In French, we had to listen to Mr Martens, accept what he said and learn regular verbs by repeating the conjugations in time with the tapping of his wedding ring against a desk top. We didn’t like him, or his subject, or his country, very much.

*

‘Wake up. Richard,’ said the nurse,’ it’s time for your medication, I’ll help you sit up.’

                The ghosts from more than fifty years in the past slowly faded as they walked off into their futures and out of my life. I didn’t want to see them as old men or hear about the ones that had died so I never did go to that school reunion. I think of Jack most days – a conflict between all the happy adventures we had growing up together and remembering him before he died as a sick man with a wife and four children he would soon be leaving.

 I still think of them all as enthusiastic teachers and bright young boys, looking forward to their lives. I think it is better that way.

Alien

Jared left the party that was busily transferring from the lounge to the kitchen for drink top-ups and nibbles. He walked through the open patio doors out into the warm velvet evening with the cooling zephyrs whispering as they gathered up and shook the dust from the curtains. He lifted his eyes to the blackness of the night sky and focused on the disc of Venus rising over the horizon to the West. He was strangely drawn to Venus but couldn’t really understand why. He was vaguely interested in astrology and cosmology but not more so than most of his peers so he could find no reason or anything special about Venus to explain it. It had been the subject of much ribald banter from his best mate, Joe, when he had mentioned it so now he kept it quiet and just looked at her when he had a few quiet moments to himself, as now.

                Joe came up and tapped him on the shoulder, he was always the life and soul of any gathering he was at. ‘Come in and join the fun instead of moping out here by yourself,’ he said.

                ‘OK,’ said Jared, ‘I wasn’t moping, I was just relaxing away from the crowd for a minute.’

                ‘Whatever, get this down you, ‘said Joe, thrusting a glass full of suspicious liquid into Jared’s reluctant grasp.               

Jared slowly followed Joe towards the noise of the throng inside He wasn’t very good at parties and hadn’t wanted to come until Joe had persuaded him. He always felt like an outsider, an observer, never really part of the crowd, just like Colin Wilson, not part of the mainstream, a little bit different. He didn’t manage to lose himself in the enjoyment of the moment, he thought of himself as a Bristolian, ‘sleeping with one eye open.’

*

They had grown up together and got on well because they liked the same things, football mainly. They supported the same team, Bristol Rovers, and lived close to each other in South Street, Bristol. They were nearly inseparable, so much so that everyone called them ‘the JJ twins’ as no one really knew which was which.

Once they had both saved up enough to buy a bike each, they could set off on expeditions of adventure, across the River Avon by the old railway bridge now carrying the cycle path, through Victoria Park and the tunnels of the Cumberland Basin road system and out into the glorious country of the Ashton Court Estate – now owned by Bristol Council and so open to all. They both enjoyed these trips as they could play in the woods, look at the herd in the deer park, run up and down the grassy slopes and race each other as they swooped down the steep grass slopes on their bikes and then get an ice cream, if they were flush with cash, from the van, parked by the side of the car park. They then often lay in the grass while licking their 99’s telling each other what they were going to do with their lives. Joe was going to join the Royal Navy and travel to all those exotic places he had heard about while Jed didn’t have any idea of what he wanted to do, he just wanted to find out more about the world – and Venus, but he kept that part to himself, he was a little weary of his peers saying he was obsessed with Venus. He was secretly certain that a different destiny awaited him, different to anything that Earth could provide.

*

One day they cycled to the end of Beggar Bush lane, intent on getting as far as the old quarry that they had heard about. Their intention was to explore the quarry and then return home via Brunel’s suspension bridge. They knew that if they got off their bikes and walked across, it would be free. They hid their bikes in the hedge and then, after crawling carefully through the wire fence, they clambered down the quarry benches, past the signs that stated, This is a dangerous quarry, not a playground. KEEP OUT. They were young so, of course, nothing would happen to them. They had the carefree feeling that they would live forever. It was easy climbing down the benches as vegetation had taken hold on the rock faces, giving hand holds on the way down. They were soon on the quarry floor and could see into the tunnel that went under the road to where the old crushing and coating plant has once produced the material for surfacing the nearby M5. They wandered around for a while, exulting in the freedom to be in a space that was once under many metres of solid rock and where a very rare sample of Rhodocrosite had been found by the Russell Society.

They tired of exploring after a while and sat in the sun to unpack their rucksacks to plunder the plastic boxes of marmite sandwiches and swig from the plastic bottles of fizzy drinks. They had a rest for a while and then climbed up the benches to emerge at the road where their bikes had been stashed. They cycled back along the road, past the traffic lights and were soon at the Western abutment of the Clifton Suspension Bridge. They dismounted to save the cost of the toll and to look at the magnificent view down along the Avon Gorge. It was a Wednesday so there were very few people around and almost no traffic. The Samaritan’s free phone was unused – no one was keen to kill themselves on a sunny spring afternoon when the birds were singing.

*

‘I want to explain something to you,’ said Joe.

                ‘Wassat?’ asked Jed, not really interested in talking, his eyes were on a group of jackdaws circling in the rising air currents near the cliffs, probably looking for likely nest sites.

                ‘Please listen to me, it is very important,’ said Joe. ‘I am not what I seem, I am an alien.’

                ‘OK,’ said Jed, going along with the joke. ‘Prove it to me then.’

Joe climbed up on to the parapet wall and started to climb over the anti-suicide wires.

                ‘Stop,’ said Jed, I believe you’

                ‘No, you don’t, you are just saying that to get me down. You have to really believe me.’ He climbed down the other side, the outside, of the suicide wires and stepped out into space. He stood there on a column of seventy five metres of fresh air, the tide was in.

Jed looked at him with his mouth open, ‘Wha, wha, what are you standing on?’

                ‘Nothing but air,’ said Joe. Now do you believe me while I tell you a story?’

                ‘Well, yes,’ said Jed, but will you please come this side of the wall and sit down with me before you start, you know I have no head for heights.’

Joe climbed over the parapet wall again and then sat down with Jed on the kerb.

*

‘It’s a long story but it goes like this. I am a member of the Space Guard. There are about three hundred and fifty of us around the world and I just happen to be here in Bristol. The reason I have to tell you about it is that I know that you have been having visions and a strange attraction to Venus. This is because our communication net with our area headquarters on Venus has been leaking a little and infecting you. We had to hide our office in the methane clouds on Venus because you humans are getting to know Mars and so we would likely be noticed.

                Our job is to see if you survive the predictable crises that life goes through on any planet and to see if we can learn any lessons by watching you cope with them. We have monitored the near extinctions through history that would have sterilised most planets but there was always just enough life left to repopulate – sometimes in greatly different forms as evolution filled the available niches. The recent wars and famines have decimated the human race but you struggled through. You got through the nuclear age without starting an atomic war and now you are facing climate change as you burn the Earth’s stores of hydrocarbons. The leakage of the communication between Earth and Venus was responsible for the Internet being developed by the way.’

                ‘OK, so say I accept that all this is true, where do you come from?’ asked Jed ‘what is the answer to climate change?’

                ‘I cannot tell you where I come from and also cannot tell you the answers, we are watching you to see if you think of different ones. There would be no point as you could not comprehend the data but let us just say that I come from a long way away in space and time.  Fermi got his paradox wrong. There are many trillions of us from billions of galaxies and the second part is not true only because you haven’t been able to see us – except for the occasional error in communications such as happened to you. We have been checking your race through your development and think that, should you survive the coming challenges, you should be ready to join the human family in about three hundred years of your time.

                Now I have to blank all your memories of this, and your obsession with Venus, so that we can both continue with our lives where we left off.’

                ‘Will you at least give me an hour to think about all this before you do that and will you answer all my questions?’

                ‘OK,’ said Joe. There’s no harm in that.’

They spent the next hour with Jed asking and getting the answers to all sorts of questions, including nuclear fusion, climate change and if the laws of physics as understood, we correct. He even asked if ‘42’ was the real answer to everything. He also got the answer to the puzzle of the unified field theory.

*

Jared stepped outside the party for a moment to get a breath of fresh air. He idly glanced up at the clear night sky and wondered if there were other people out there and if he would ever see one of them. He didn’t think so.

                His friend Joe, called him in to the kitchen to join him in a beer.

                 

Greener Grass

‘Dzień dobry, jak się  pan miewa? Good morning, Sir. How are you?’ Said the security man as he leaned out of the security hut window to greet Paweł.

            ‘Bardzo dobry, dziękuję, a ty? Very good, thank you, and you?’ Replied Paweł automatically, slipping into the ridiculous Polish formality that inevitably accompanied every chance encounter with another human being. He had just stopped walking, to be checked in at the entrance to the eponymous brewery in the centre of Leżajsk. He had walked to work today, pushing his bike, as it was January. The local river San was immobile, locked in its icy phase until mid March and the only road clearing was shovel-full’s of sand scattered randomly across the road by bored men riding on the back of flatbed trucks. Salt was too expensive while the sand was free from the local pit. This may have helped the grip of the tyres of trucks and cars but it did nothing to assist bikes as they struggled over and through the ruts.

            ‘Tak, bardzo dobry dziękuję, yes, also very good, thank you’ the security man completed the social dance, glad of a small interruption to interrupt the boredom of his twelve hour shift.

Paweł walked on through the forbidding, rusty steel gates to his allocated space and carefully locked his bike to the steel railing before entering the brew house, and climbing the concrete steps to the malting floor where he worked, spreading the sprouting barley out across the floor, checking the growth and then collecting it together to get it ready for the kiln. He was happy with his job because, although it was poorly paid, he worked in the warm malting room so he was kept warm all through the South Eastern Polish winters at no cost to himself.

His first job today was to finish clearing the malting floor then sweeping it clean, ready for the next batch of barley but he was called into the brew master’s office by Wojciech Dutko before he had a chance to get started.

            ‘Come in and sit down,’ said Pan Dutko. Paweł’s stomach lurched, he knew there was bad news coming, he had only been in the office twice in the five years he had worked at the brewery and he had never been asked to sit down.  ‘The sales of the brewery have dropped, partly because of the hard winter and the difficulty of getting the trucks out so we have to make cutbacks in the labour force. I am afraid we will have to let you go.’

            ‘But I am not paid so very much, Pan Dutko, so there will be little savings by getting rid of me and anyway, who will do my work in the malting room?’

            ‘That is not your problem now, we will find someone,’ said Wojciech, ‘now go over to the office, they are expecting you. Pick up the money owed to you and you can have the rest of the day off.’

Paweł knew this was not the real reason as he had seen no drop in the amount of malting that had come through his room, he suspected something else was going on. He slowly cycled home but stopped at the sklep, shop, on his way to buy something for his tea. He morbidly looked at the new steel grill over the front display window that had some curlicues designed in to try to make it look like a work of art rather than the functional anti-theft device that was its real role in life.

He chatted to old man Skrzypczak, after the ritual of asking after each other’s health, behind the counter. He was full of the news that his nephew had got a new job at the brewery, the wages were good and he would be working in a warm room on the malting floor. Apparently it had all been arranged by the old man’s son in law who worked at the brewery, name of Dutko. This was not corruption, Paweł knew that, it was just that, if you had any sort of power or influence, you were expected to use it to the advantage of anyone in your family . This was Social Darwinism in action – Survival of the Best connected.

Paweł was very unhappy with this news but was determined to get another job quickly. The next day he pushed his bike and cycled where possible, along the familiar route to the same industrial estate and talked his way past a security guard by saying he had an appointment at the Personnel Department.

            He was in the personnel department of a factory belonging to Hortex, the largest fruit juice manufacturer in Poland and now had to talk his way into a job. The deputy Personnel Manager, Andrzej Stefanek was one of his neighbours so he shamelessly claimed that, ‘Andrzej had told me that there was a vacancy on the apple juice line.’ By coincidence, there was and he got the job on a trial basis and on very low wages. It was now up to him to prove he could do the job and to work his way up in the company to earn more money. He also had to keep clear of Pan Stefanek for a time so that he wasn’t asked any awkward questions.

            Paweł was kitted out with rubber boots, overalls, rubber gloves and an apron as it was dirty, cold work in the factory. His job was to stand at the conveyor and pick out the rotten or damaged apples as they were unloaded from the tote bin and carried to the crusher where the Soc, juice, was extracted.

            He was quite happy doing his twelve hour shifts in spite of the cold and poor money until, one day Andrzej Stefanek found out that he was working there and had got his job by deception. He was sacked immediately. He was out of work again with no contacts and so little chance of another job. 

            He was in the karczma, pub, one night drowning his sorrows with Żubrówka, his favourite buffalo grass vodka, with his friend from the village when Jakub suggested they go to England as he had heard that there were plenty of well-paid jobs there. ‘We could go together, ‘ Jakub suggested. ‘It must be better than staying here with no job or money.’

            They spent a month doing research, borrowing money for the fare from the family and contacting Jakub’s Uncle in Peterborough for some temporary accommodation. They could fly by Ryanair from Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport which was only forty miles away near the steel town built by the communists at Nova Huta. This would take them to Stansted, or they could use the much cheaper – but longer coaches and ferries. They decided to take the coach to save money. They got the first coach from the Rynek Starego Miasta  in Leżajsk, the  old town square, for the six hour trip to Warszawa, Warsaw, and then another on to Berlin, London, Peterborough and Boston.

*

It was cold, very cold, and Paweł’s back was aching from constantly bending forward with both hands to grab the next one and separate the  flowering head from the stem before dropping the head, carefully into the constantly-running conveyor. He looked over to Jakub, level with him but cutting a different row; grinned to show that he felt just the same, cold and aching.

            It was 3 am, dark, cold. They were both in a sort of crude tent rigged up on top of a long trailer pulled slowly across the never-ending field by a tractor. The only respite they had was when the tractor reached the end of the field and had to manoeuvre around, ready for the return trip and also when the other trailer came alongside to take the loaded crates away to the warehouse where they were to be collected by the ever – hungry supermarkets.

 Paweł and Jakub were seated right at the back of the trailer, on a bench just above the ground with their feet on a cross bar just in front of them. Their job was to cut the cauliflowers with one chop of the machete they each held in their right hand while lifting the head with the left to deftly drop it into the next vacant conveyor bucket. The conveyor took the cauliflowers up to the body of the trailer that was kitted out like a production line where the heads were inspected, weighed, wrapped in film, labelled and packed into crates by several women. It was cold, back breaking work but the job was secure, there were potatoes, brocoli, cabbage and the hated sprouts to harvest as well as the cauliflowers and the pay was regular and good.

            ‘Trawa jest bardziej zielona, co? The grass is greener, huh?’ said Jakub.

Paweł just grinned in reply and carried on chopping.